It's always hard being the younger sibling. Especially when your older kin is rightly famous. Basically, assuming you aren't cynical enough to simply hop onto the name and ride it towards your own limited and mediocre success, you're in for a life of being introduced as a brother or sister. (One thinks of the complaint of Abraham Mendelssohn: "Once I was the son of my father, now I am the father of my son.") Unless, of course, you're actually able to meet or even outdo your sibling. Which has been known to happen on occasion (looking at you, Serena Williams).
Night Stalker here is in a similar sort of situation. It's made from the same basic stuff as Goose Island's Bourbon County Stout, which is probably still the best beer I've ever had, but instead of throwing it in a whiskey barrel for a couple of months to mellow they saturate the stuff with Mt. Hood and Simcoe hops and let it loose on an unsuspecting public. For awhile they were only serving it on draft, but now it's finally getting a proper bottled release.
Me, I've got two of them. One of them I'm storing away until the hops die down a bit. The other I'm drinking now, say about a year before I probably should. Numbers? Well, it's 11.7% alcohol by volume, which is slightly below than the mind-numbing 13% of the BCS. It's also ten bucks for a deuce-deuce bottle, only two less than its older kin. And at close to the same price, it's gotta be nearly as good or better. Is it? Let's find out.
Holy crap, the hops. I've barely cracked the cap and already the piney fumes of California are filling the room. This is fierce, eye-watering, wallpaper-peeling stuff. Put this near a houseplant and it'll be dead within minutes. It smells for all the world like an IPA, and a particularly potent and biting one at that - everything is grapefruity citrus wrapped around pine needles, soaked in alcohol. Even with all those hops, there's no way they're going to hide a level of heat well north of 20 proof. After I eventually get around to pouring it, it finally begins to seem like a stout. Night Stalker is a rich, syrupy motor-oil black with a one-finger sepia head; the stuff is utterly gorgeous, honestly. Giving the nose a second chance, I still can't smell anything beyond hops and booze. The malt, so powerful in the BCS, is nowhere to be found. After a round of agitation I can only just begin to detect it - there's some roasted stuff in there trying to push a bit of espresso through, but that's all, and even that's gone after a moment. Beyond that this aroma is all fresh, sour, grassy, nose-runny, brutal hops.
On the taste it wins back a lot of points. The closest comparison, as you might expect, is its older brother. Like the BCS, Night Stalker is all about throwing as many flavors around as possible. It's got a similar rich, almost too crowded taste profile - with the difference that there's no oaky bourbon notes at all, way less sheer thickness, a lot of dialing back on everything else, and a hell of a lot more hops. Up front and going into the middle, coffee and mocha dominate with a billion additional flavors swarming around them. It's not even desperately bitter or hot at this point, either: for an imperial stout of such power and mass, this bit of the profile is shockingly drinkable. Even here, though, the grassy grapefruit of the hops is working its magic, and it really gets into its groove by the end. The closing moments are a big juicy California slap in the face, one which slowly fades out into a more mellow piney aura. Here I was expecting the malts to completely give up the ghost - but to their credit, they don't! Instead they too climax into a big boozy bittersweet (emphasis on the sweet) finish, with flavors of rum and wood emerging. The aftertaste, consisting of the afterglow from these malts intermixed with the piney hop remains, lasts pretty much until one's next sip.
Is it easy to drink? Uh, no. It's not quite as good at smearing one's mouth as the Bourbon County Stout, which is an acknowledged master, but it's not too far away from that. And it's still thick, hot, and very very hoppy, so this is a beer that's going to take awhile. But that's okay, because drinking this brew slowly - as one must - is a rewarding thing. Unlike the BCS, which is amazing right from the start, this one takes awhile to work its charms. At first it comes over way, way too hot and hoppy, as if you've just been thrown into a citrusy sea of alcohol. It takes awhile to learn to breathe. As it warms and as you start to adjust, the beer begins to reveal is subtleties - and there are a lot of them. Vanilla, sassafras, prunes, a little touch of licorice, things I can't even name - tons and tons of flavors all stacked on top of each other. So, this beer is a chainsaw-weilding maniac at heart. But it's a maniac with a library and a fantastic art collection.
It's good, this beer, within shooting distance of great. But there are three problems with it. First, it really is just too young right now (as I expected). It needs a good couple of months (make that years) of mellowing before it'll truly come into its own. Second, there's the price. $10 is too much. It's a very good imperial stout, true, but you can get other very good imperial stouts for half that price. But those two, glaring though they may be, aren't Night Stalker's biggest problem (and you should already have some idea of what is). For it may be an amazing, even a world class beer, but there's one thing it'll never be: better than its big brother.
Sure, Night Stalker is pretty damn complex, but the Bourbon County Stout tops it. Night Stalker may be loud and shouty and overpowering, but the BCS has even more presence without resorting to hop terrorism. All this beer does, essentially, is to take the skeleton of its older sibling and run with it in a different (worse) direction. Only hopeless hopheads and completionists need ever really consider trying one. If you want a ridiculously hoppy beer, buy a Hopslam. If you want a stupid-good imperial stout brewed by Goose Island, buy a BCS. If you need something that splits the difference... well, buy a four-pack of Old Rasputins.
I snagged two of these things, which I don't regret. I have no doubt that beer enthusiasts worldwide have also grabbed a few to enjoy, pack away, and share with friends. Rightly so: it's good beer. The thing is, though, Goose Island made 750 cases of this stuff. That's nine thousand bottles. And 9k may not seem like a lot, but keep in mind that most of them are going to be kept around the Chicago area. Are there, say, five thousand people here willing to drop ten bucks on a bottle of hoppy 11.7% stout? Call me cynical, but I have my doubts. It would be fine if it were something totally unique, but it's not - no one except the hardcore will bother, and after the curious have tried it once they'll simply fork over the two extra bucks and switch back to the BCS. So expect to see these dark, ominous bottles clogging up Binnys store shelves well into next year.
Sad to say, then, it's just another case of a sibling getting overshadowed. If you see it heavily discounted - and it will be - give Night Stalker a shot, but otherwise you don't really need to bother. Sucks to be the baby of the family, eh?
Grade: A-
Summary: Bittersweet, complex, delicious, extremely hoppy, and - sad to say - basically pointless.
Showing posts with label stout. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stout. Show all posts
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Micreview: Guinness Extra Stout and Murphy's Stout
Well, it's the night after St. Patty's. And, although I may be late about it, I suppose I'm a obligated to review some Irish stouts. But there's a problem: I think the big names are shite, to be honest, including and especially all the Guinness I've had. I'm told, of course, that I've never had the real Guinness - and I reserve an open mind for if I try a pint of it one day - but I can state with certainty that all the Guinness that I've had in Chicago bars or in cans has been a muted watery mess not worth the material used to brew it.
Let's see, then, if a bottle of the Extra Stout does any better. This particular example was proudly brewed in Toronto,Canada Ireland, and it's got the same cream-on-black bomber design you've seen in every grocery store everywhere (especially in March). So: is it any good?
Well, it certainly looks like a stout should, pouring jet-black with a finger and a half of tan head. The nose is rather unassuming, though: the coffee-like note of roasted barley comes first, and there's also just a little bit of fruit if you concentrate. Sour fruit, not sweet - underripened cherries, maybe. It's not bad, but it's nothing to knock you over, either by detail or by raw power.
The taste is quite dry, as it should be, and fuller than I recalled. There's a touch of cacao at the start, which then expands into a full-on roasted malt frenzy. Halfway through it's chiefly lots and lots of charcoal and cacao, with a sweet-and sour note sneaking in towards the end. The hops aren't exactly no-shows, but they don't do much to relieve matters: mostly they just seem to add a slightly rusty effect, which isn't great. The aftertaste, to no one's surprise, is dry, consisting entirely of the bitter, lingering roasted flavors. It's a decent brew, I guess - it's a hell of a lot better than the nitro stuff they sell in bars - but it still fails to have any hook for me. The thing I'm most disappointed in, I think, is the mouthfeel: initially I found this stout rather full-bodied and creamy, but halfway through the bottle it's getting increasingly watery with every sip.
This beer, I would say, is exactly average. If you've got some roasted goose on the carvery (or some really nice Swiss cheese) and you need a beer to pair with it, this'll do nicely: it does its bitter thing, and it does it well. Beyond that, though, there's not much need to bother. It's really not worth drinking on its own, and the roasted malts do get annoying after awhile.
At this point I was faced with a problem: I wanted something to compare the Guinness to, and there aren't many other stouts with Irish ancestry around aside from the aforementioned Guinness Draught (which I avoid) and Beamish (which I couldn't find). I did find Murphy's Stout, though - four-packs were on sale at Binnys, and I snagged them. It comes in a can, too, which dutifully reports on its side that Murphy's is made in Edinburgh,Scotland Ireland. Should be interesting.
Well, the head on this thing is just amazing - it bubbles up from the bottom and forms a frothy beige of about two fingers. It's absolutely beautiful. And the color, again, is totally black - darker than black, in fact. It's a stereotypical, picture perfect stout appearance, even moreso than the Guinness ES; it looks fantastic. And the nose... the nose is... oh, no. The first thing I notice is that it smells like sour barley. With a little bit of a roasted hue, maybe some lactose and some yeast. And... that's it. It's one of the dullest aromas I've had in awhile, not only in the sense that it's boring but that it actually feels like it's been blunted. Oh, man. I may have made a horrible mistake here.
Onto the taste, where the misses just keep on coming. It's got a smooth consistency, to be sure, but it's also rather watery and unpleasant. Think skim milk. And the flavor? Bzzzt, sorry, there really isn't much. Somewhere - way way in the back - are some traditional Irish stout notes like roasted malts and cacao and a dry finish, but they've been so muted that there's almost nothing left. It's as if someone drew a stout with a pencil, and then erased it (but didn't completely finish the job). No, worse than that: seeing a half-erased stout right in front of one's eyes is still too direct an experience. Drinking Murphy's is like hearing your neighbor down the hall drink an Irish stout.
There's just nothing here. No flavor, no alcohol (4% abv), barely any texture. It's a 16 ounce can of nada that happens to look good when you pour it. I'm not sure exactly what I can blame this on: the can? the apparent nitrogenation of the can? the Edinburghers? Who knows, and I suppose it doesn't really matter. If you like beers that look pretty, get yourself a four-pack asap. If you like good stouts, avoid this stuff like a SARS case.
Really, Ireland, come on. You invented this style, and all you send us is a tasteless draught, a middling beer that any halfway-decent American microbrewer could better, and flavored stoutwater? We get drunk in celebration of your patron saint, dammit. You can do better than this. And until then, I think we should celebrate St. Patty's with stouts that are actually good - like Old #38, Black Hawk, Out of Bounds, or Black Sun, say.
Guinness Extra Stout
Grade: C
Summary: It's an Irish stout. It's roasty and a little dry. Meh.
Murphy's Stout
Grade: D-
Summary: Stout flavors dying cold and alone in a (very pretty) submarine, trapped at the bottom of an ocean.
Let's see, then, if a bottle of the Extra Stout does any better. This particular example was proudly brewed in Toronto,
Well, it certainly looks like a stout should, pouring jet-black with a finger and a half of tan head. The nose is rather unassuming, though: the coffee-like note of roasted barley comes first, and there's also just a little bit of fruit if you concentrate. Sour fruit, not sweet - underripened cherries, maybe. It's not bad, but it's nothing to knock you over, either by detail or by raw power.
The taste is quite dry, as it should be, and fuller than I recalled. There's a touch of cacao at the start, which then expands into a full-on roasted malt frenzy. Halfway through it's chiefly lots and lots of charcoal and cacao, with a sweet-and sour note sneaking in towards the end. The hops aren't exactly no-shows, but they don't do much to relieve matters: mostly they just seem to add a slightly rusty effect, which isn't great. The aftertaste, to no one's surprise, is dry, consisting entirely of the bitter, lingering roasted flavors. It's a decent brew, I guess - it's a hell of a lot better than the nitro stuff they sell in bars - but it still fails to have any hook for me. The thing I'm most disappointed in, I think, is the mouthfeel: initially I found this stout rather full-bodied and creamy, but halfway through the bottle it's getting increasingly watery with every sip.
This beer, I would say, is exactly average. If you've got some roasted goose on the carvery (or some really nice Swiss cheese) and you need a beer to pair with it, this'll do nicely: it does its bitter thing, and it does it well. Beyond that, though, there's not much need to bother. It's really not worth drinking on its own, and the roasted malts do get annoying after awhile.
At this point I was faced with a problem: I wanted something to compare the Guinness to, and there aren't many other stouts with Irish ancestry around aside from the aforementioned Guinness Draught (which I avoid) and Beamish (which I couldn't find). I did find Murphy's Stout, though - four-packs were on sale at Binnys, and I snagged them. It comes in a can, too, which dutifully reports on its side that Murphy's is made in Edinburgh,
Well, the head on this thing is just amazing - it bubbles up from the bottom and forms a frothy beige of about two fingers. It's absolutely beautiful. And the color, again, is totally black - darker than black, in fact. It's a stereotypical, picture perfect stout appearance, even moreso than the Guinness ES; it looks fantastic. And the nose... the nose is... oh, no. The first thing I notice is that it smells like sour barley. With a little bit of a roasted hue, maybe some lactose and some yeast. And... that's it. It's one of the dullest aromas I've had in awhile, not only in the sense that it's boring but that it actually feels like it's been blunted. Oh, man. I may have made a horrible mistake here.
Onto the taste, where the misses just keep on coming. It's got a smooth consistency, to be sure, but it's also rather watery and unpleasant. Think skim milk. And the flavor? Bzzzt, sorry, there really isn't much. Somewhere - way way in the back - are some traditional Irish stout notes like roasted malts and cacao and a dry finish, but they've been so muted that there's almost nothing left. It's as if someone drew a stout with a pencil, and then erased it (but didn't completely finish the job). No, worse than that: seeing a half-erased stout right in front of one's eyes is still too direct an experience. Drinking Murphy's is like hearing your neighbor down the hall drink an Irish stout.
There's just nothing here. No flavor, no alcohol (4% abv), barely any texture. It's a 16 ounce can of nada that happens to look good when you pour it. I'm not sure exactly what I can blame this on: the can? the apparent nitrogenation of the can? the Edinburghers? Who knows, and I suppose it doesn't really matter. If you like beers that look pretty, get yourself a four-pack asap. If you like good stouts, avoid this stuff like a SARS case.
Really, Ireland, come on. You invented this style, and all you send us is a tasteless draught, a middling beer that any halfway-decent American microbrewer could better, and flavored stoutwater? We get drunk in celebration of your patron saint, dammit. You can do better than this. And until then, I think we should celebrate St. Patty's with stouts that are actually good - like Old #38, Black Hawk, Out of Bounds, or Black Sun, say.
Guinness Extra Stout
Grade: C
Summary: It's an Irish stout. It's roasty and a little dry. Meh.
Murphy's Stout
Grade: D-
Summary: Stout flavors dying cold and alone in a (very pretty) submarine, trapped at the bottom of an ocean.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Micreview: Lagunitas Cappucino Stout
Well, it's paper-writing week here at the U, and that means I don't have time to conjure up any deep thoughts or big comparative things. Instead I've decided (in brief form) to give the whole "imperial stout with coffee" thing another chance. This may or may not be a horrible idea.
The Lagunitas folks - who are, oddly enough, located about twenty miles north of Lagunitas, in Petaluma - may be from California, but they're fairly ubiquitous here in Illinois somehow. The Binnys website lists 18 of their beers, and I've yet to visit a reputable store without at least a few of their brews in stock. But aside from their IPA - which is almost architypically Californian, to a fault - I've never actually had any of these things. Tonight that changes. The goofy dog on the bottle has sold me, and so I'm trying out their December seasonal: the Cappucino Stout. So, here we go.
Well, it pours black (no surprise there), although when held up to a lamp I can detect some of the light still getting through. Funny enough, it's all ruby at the edges rather than brown. There's a cute little wheat-colored head, too, about a finger's worth, which then quickly dies away (this thing is north of 9% abv, after all). And the aroma - oh, happy days, they've done this one properly. Unlike the Breakfast Stout from Founders, which (you'll recall) I kind of hated, this one comes off as really well-balanced. The coffee is right out front, but kept under control by the addition of a thick ol' slab of sweet malts. Think of a slice of chocolate cake served with a cup of joe and you'll be close. And given a ton of agitation, I can actually detect some hops as well - which, for this kind of beer, is new to me. It's not a nose for the ages (I think I ultimately prefer the Kona Porter), but it's still an unexpectedly pleasant one.
The taste is quite a bit more varied, although it would be a stretch to say that anything about it is totally unexpected. At the front end and quite a ways beyond, this just comes across as a nice, extremely mild imperial stout: lots of bittersweet roasty malts and just a touch of dark fruit. As it moves towards the back of one's mouth, though, the coffee sweeps in like a German panzer brigade. Things get very bitter very fast as the bumble bean swarms over just about everything. And then, right after this, the hops try to push their way through - I can't really tell what sort they are, though, because they're clearly not making much headway against the onslaught. They do provide a lovely touch of dryness to the aftertaste, though, which is otherwise just coffee bitterness and a lingering chocolatey sweetness from the malts. As far as its texture, it comes across as rather thin for the style (not a motor oil, this) but still quite full-bodied and mouth-coating. It's pleasant, but not easy, to drink: you could easily spend a few hours on one bottle.
Bottom line? I like it. It's not something I would drink every day and it still falls short of perfection here and there, but it's a fine beer all the same. It's a good one to split with a group of friends, really, as anyone but a seasoned veteran is going to have trouble finishing a full deuce-deuce of this stuff. It hasn't dethroned the Kona as my favorite coffee beer, but it adds new evidence against my assertion that the idea of such a thing is fundamentally misguided.
Grade: B+
Summary: The first imperial coffee stout I've ever had that actually works.
The Lagunitas folks - who are, oddly enough, located about twenty miles north of Lagunitas, in Petaluma - may be from California, but they're fairly ubiquitous here in Illinois somehow. The Binnys website lists 18 of their beers, and I've yet to visit a reputable store without at least a few of their brews in stock. But aside from their IPA - which is almost architypically Californian, to a fault - I've never actually had any of these things. Tonight that changes. The goofy dog on the bottle has sold me, and so I'm trying out their December seasonal: the Cappucino Stout. So, here we go.
Well, it pours black (no surprise there), although when held up to a lamp I can detect some of the light still getting through. Funny enough, it's all ruby at the edges rather than brown. There's a cute little wheat-colored head, too, about a finger's worth, which then quickly dies away (this thing is north of 9% abv, after all). And the aroma - oh, happy days, they've done this one properly. Unlike the Breakfast Stout from Founders, which (you'll recall) I kind of hated, this one comes off as really well-balanced. The coffee is right out front, but kept under control by the addition of a thick ol' slab of sweet malts. Think of a slice of chocolate cake served with a cup of joe and you'll be close. And given a ton of agitation, I can actually detect some hops as well - which, for this kind of beer, is new to me. It's not a nose for the ages (I think I ultimately prefer the Kona Porter), but it's still an unexpectedly pleasant one.
The taste is quite a bit more varied, although it would be a stretch to say that anything about it is totally unexpected. At the front end and quite a ways beyond, this just comes across as a nice, extremely mild imperial stout: lots of bittersweet roasty malts and just a touch of dark fruit. As it moves towards the back of one's mouth, though, the coffee sweeps in like a German panzer brigade. Things get very bitter very fast as the bumble bean swarms over just about everything. And then, right after this, the hops try to push their way through - I can't really tell what sort they are, though, because they're clearly not making much headway against the onslaught. They do provide a lovely touch of dryness to the aftertaste, though, which is otherwise just coffee bitterness and a lingering chocolatey sweetness from the malts. As far as its texture, it comes across as rather thin for the style (not a motor oil, this) but still quite full-bodied and mouth-coating. It's pleasant, but not easy, to drink: you could easily spend a few hours on one bottle.
Bottom line? I like it. It's not something I would drink every day and it still falls short of perfection here and there, but it's a fine beer all the same. It's a good one to split with a group of friends, really, as anyone but a seasoned veteran is going to have trouble finishing a full deuce-deuce of this stuff. It hasn't dethroned the Kona as my favorite coffee beer, but it adds new evidence against my assertion that the idea of such a thing is fundamentally misguided.
Grade: B+
Summary: The first imperial coffee stout I've ever had that actually works.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Review: Ridgeway Foreign Export Stout
Ever since I aced the Lion Stout, I've had a nagging question. With the possible exception of Arcadia's Cocoa Loco - which is a somewhat different sort of beer - I'd never had an export stout before. And so, even though I was completely bowled over by the Sri Lanka slammer, there always remained a doubt about whether I really fell in love with the beer itself or with the style in general. Could it be that I'd just cornered the weakest member of a superior genus? Mightn't there be some other foreign stout out there which is even better? Thus, for a few months I've been keeping my eye out for something else of the same sort to compare the Lion with.
Needless to say I found one, and here it is: the Ridgeway Brewing Foreign Export Stout. It wasn't cheap - a mere 16.9 oz bottle went for $5.50, half the price of a whole sixer of Lions - but in the interest of science and my own curiosity I thought I'd give it a try. Unlike its South Asian cousin, though, this stuff hails direct from England. That gives it a "pedigree," I suppose, if that matters (it doesn't). And somehow it makes it seem even more ridiculous than the Lion, which (horrible photoshopping considered) is already pretty far up there. Despite how much I enjoy the culture, not to mention the beer, of England, there are some things that just send me giggling and keep me there. For starters, the Ridgeway here comes from somewhere called South Stoke, Oxfordshire. When I look it up Google Maps disagrees, and insists that No, South Stoke is actually in Berkshire, not Oxfordshire. So South Stoke either doesn't actually know where it is, or one of these sources is wrong. Frankly I'm happy to allow South Stoke to be wherever it likes, though, since both counties sound equally ridiculous to my American ears. They sound like the sort of places famous for a 12th century battle between some peasants and the esteemed Baron Doddingerton over taxation procedures in the Chipping Kilmister region. Everyone who lives there either drives a Bentley already or at least wants one - except in Oxford, maybe.
I kid, of course. They probably don't want them in Reading either.
But really, I kid because the beer itself encourages it. There's not much information to be found on Ridgeway Brewing, but the importers happily report that "Ridgeway Brewery is named for the ancient road... that meanders along a low escarpment across the high, rolling pastoral plain that is the southwest of England." Oh my. And it goes on: "The now patchy stone surface of the Ridgeway was laid by Britain’s oldest inhabitants – Druids and the like – thousands of years before the Romans turned up to build their own roadways. It is the oldest road in the British Isles and Europe, running nearly 100 miles, past that other ancient landmark, Stonehenge..." Okay, I'm stopping there, because if they pour any more of the Tradition thing on me I will probably start heaving. Yes, England is Old and your beer has history and Britishness and so on, we know.
On the outside, though, it really does have Britishness. I mean, blimey, just look at the bottle. It could only be more English if they'd somehow shaped the cap into the Spirit of Ecstasy. As a result, I'm expecting this stuff to taste like a mossy 9th century castle; whether that'll be a good or bad thing, I don't know. (But I'm eager to see.)
Well, here goes.
Nice - it pours a rich chocolate color, with a fine and proud three-finger tan head. I'm suddenly kicking myself for not having any Elgar on hand as accompaniment. The aroma is really lovely too - my closest point of reference is the Lion Stout, of course, but this is a bit more fruity and sweet, with way less cacao. Back behind the fruitiness is a mild toffee smell, intermixed with some earthy hops. It's a deep and musky aroma, really, like you might expect the Lake District to smell. It's not an amazing nose - it's actually a little too laid back, really - but it's pretty nice, and very British. Let's give it a sip or two.
Oh, that's scrumptious. Compared (again) to the Sri Lankan entry the taste is definitely several ranks sweeter, but it still maintains a bitter edge which (I assume) is characteristic of its species. There's some dark chocolate up front, which expands into a sweet but more espresso-like taste as it moves back. This is about where the fruitiness (prunes, mostly) from the nose comes in as well, although it's pretty well manhandled by the espresso. Then there's the hops, which arrive hauling nuts, soil, and that odd minty note I'm coming to associate with whole leaf hops. Finally, the aftertaste features whatever espresso has hung on from before plus the minty-soily hops. As far as texture goes, that too is like the Lion. Both are creamy but also quite carbonated, and these facts balance out nicely. It's a very easy beer to drink, especially for an eight percenter, but not so easy that you can unintentionally get yourself in trouble.
So by now you should already have some suspicion of the verdict. Is it a good beer? Yes, absolutely. I like it a lot, and if I could get a sixer of it around the $9 mark it would quickly go into my regular rotations. Hell, in a world without Sri Lanka I'd even be willing to drop six bucks on one every now and then. The trouble, obviously, is that as good as this is, a cheaper and even better brew is out there waiting to steal its blood pudding. As fine and English a beer as this is, the Lion Stout is somehow even moreso. It comes across as older, more earthy, more massive - and less user-friendly too, and by God better for it. Plus it's cheaper. Plus it's easier to find. So, basically on every level that matters the Lion is a better choice. Unless you really want a beer that's slightly sweeter, there's no reason to buy the Ridgeway. The English fought them in the brewing... and they lost.
So, to answer my question from before: yes, the Lion Stout really is that good. On the other hand, discovering and trying the Ridgeway has left me with a new puzzlement: why, exactly, did it take me this long to find another friggin' stout of this style? Why are so few breweries making them? I mean, just take a look at the beers available. Aside from the Lion, how many of these have you ever actually witnessed in the wild? Personally, I can recall seeing Fade to Black last year, and I know I spotted Reaper's entry somewhere or other. That's all. And this is still the case even when most of the sizeable microbreweries in the US (I suspect - haven't done the math) sell an imperial stout or two. The shelves are full of the damn things, in every variation anyone could want - 8% or 18% ABV, with chocolate, vanilla, and/or coffee thrown in, made with oatmeal or milk sugar, aged in barrels, whatever. Now, I love imperial stouts to a fault, but all of this still gets a bit stale after awhile. So why is it - with a earthier, mellower, possibly even more interesting, but equally powerful close relative of that style right on hand - that almost no one has bothered to switch things up? Why are there only a handful of American microbreweries selling these brews, leaving the Sri Lankans and the British as our main options?
I have to believe that I'm not the only person who adores this style. Other folks out there, perhaps, are also getting a bit bored with the parade of 40 proof Earl Grey-infused rum-barrel-aged hopheady stouts. So step up, brewers, it's time for something a little different. Give the Sri Lankans a scare or two.
Grade: B+
Summary: Like the Lion Stout, except sweeter and less interesting. And nearly three times as expensive.
Needless to say I found one, and here it is: the Ridgeway Brewing Foreign Export Stout. It wasn't cheap - a mere 16.9 oz bottle went for $5.50, half the price of a whole sixer of Lions - but in the interest of science and my own curiosity I thought I'd give it a try. Unlike its South Asian cousin, though, this stuff hails direct from England. That gives it a "pedigree," I suppose, if that matters (it doesn't). And somehow it makes it seem even more ridiculous than the Lion, which (horrible photoshopping considered) is already pretty far up there. Despite how much I enjoy the culture, not to mention the beer, of England, there are some things that just send me giggling and keep me there. For starters, the Ridgeway here comes from somewhere called South Stoke, Oxfordshire. When I look it up Google Maps disagrees, and insists that No, South Stoke is actually in Berkshire, not Oxfordshire. So South Stoke either doesn't actually know where it is, or one of these sources is wrong. Frankly I'm happy to allow South Stoke to be wherever it likes, though, since both counties sound equally ridiculous to my American ears. They sound like the sort of places famous for a 12th century battle between some peasants and the esteemed Baron Doddingerton over taxation procedures in the Chipping Kilmister region. Everyone who lives there either drives a Bentley already or at least wants one - except in Oxford, maybe.
I kid, of course. They probably don't want them in Reading either.
But really, I kid because the beer itself encourages it. There's not much information to be found on Ridgeway Brewing, but the importers happily report that "Ridgeway Brewery is named for the ancient road... that meanders along a low escarpment across the high, rolling pastoral plain that is the southwest of England." Oh my. And it goes on: "The now patchy stone surface of the Ridgeway was laid by Britain’s oldest inhabitants – Druids and the like – thousands of years before the Romans turned up to build their own roadways. It is the oldest road in the British Isles and Europe, running nearly 100 miles, past that other ancient landmark, Stonehenge..." Okay, I'm stopping there, because if they pour any more of the Tradition thing on me I will probably start heaving. Yes, England is Old and your beer has history and Britishness and so on, we know.
On the outside, though, it really does have Britishness. I mean, blimey, just look at the bottle. It could only be more English if they'd somehow shaped the cap into the Spirit of Ecstasy. As a result, I'm expecting this stuff to taste like a mossy 9th century castle; whether that'll be a good or bad thing, I don't know. (But I'm eager to see.)
Well, here goes.
Nice - it pours a rich chocolate color, with a fine and proud three-finger tan head. I'm suddenly kicking myself for not having any Elgar on hand as accompaniment. The aroma is really lovely too - my closest point of reference is the Lion Stout, of course, but this is a bit more fruity and sweet, with way less cacao. Back behind the fruitiness is a mild toffee smell, intermixed with some earthy hops. It's a deep and musky aroma, really, like you might expect the Lake District to smell. It's not an amazing nose - it's actually a little too laid back, really - but it's pretty nice, and very British. Let's give it a sip or two.
Oh, that's scrumptious. Compared (again) to the Sri Lankan entry the taste is definitely several ranks sweeter, but it still maintains a bitter edge which (I assume) is characteristic of its species. There's some dark chocolate up front, which expands into a sweet but more espresso-like taste as it moves back. This is about where the fruitiness (prunes, mostly) from the nose comes in as well, although it's pretty well manhandled by the espresso. Then there's the hops, which arrive hauling nuts, soil, and that odd minty note I'm coming to associate with whole leaf hops. Finally, the aftertaste features whatever espresso has hung on from before plus the minty-soily hops. As far as texture goes, that too is like the Lion. Both are creamy but also quite carbonated, and these facts balance out nicely. It's a very easy beer to drink, especially for an eight percenter, but not so easy that you can unintentionally get yourself in trouble.
So by now you should already have some suspicion of the verdict. Is it a good beer? Yes, absolutely. I like it a lot, and if I could get a sixer of it around the $9 mark it would quickly go into my regular rotations. Hell, in a world without Sri Lanka I'd even be willing to drop six bucks on one every now and then. The trouble, obviously, is that as good as this is, a cheaper and even better brew is out there waiting to steal its blood pudding. As fine and English a beer as this is, the Lion Stout is somehow even moreso. It comes across as older, more earthy, more massive - and less user-friendly too, and by God better for it. Plus it's cheaper. Plus it's easier to find. So, basically on every level that matters the Lion is a better choice. Unless you really want a beer that's slightly sweeter, there's no reason to buy the Ridgeway. The English fought them in the brewing... and they lost.
So, to answer my question from before: yes, the Lion Stout really is that good. On the other hand, discovering and trying the Ridgeway has left me with a new puzzlement: why, exactly, did it take me this long to find another friggin' stout of this style? Why are so few breweries making them? I mean, just take a look at the beers available. Aside from the Lion, how many of these have you ever actually witnessed in the wild? Personally, I can recall seeing Fade to Black last year, and I know I spotted Reaper's entry somewhere or other. That's all. And this is still the case even when most of the sizeable microbreweries in the US (I suspect - haven't done the math) sell an imperial stout or two. The shelves are full of the damn things, in every variation anyone could want - 8% or 18% ABV, with chocolate, vanilla, and/or coffee thrown in, made with oatmeal or milk sugar, aged in barrels, whatever. Now, I love imperial stouts to a fault, but all of this still gets a bit stale after awhile. So why is it - with a earthier, mellower, possibly even more interesting, but equally powerful close relative of that style right on hand - that almost no one has bothered to switch things up? Why are there only a handful of American microbreweries selling these brews, leaving the Sri Lankans and the British as our main options?
I have to believe that I'm not the only person who adores this style. Other folks out there, perhaps, are also getting a bit bored with the parade of 40 proof Earl Grey-infused rum-barrel-aged hopheady stouts. So step up, brewers, it's time for something a little different. Give the Sri Lankans a scare or two.
Grade: B+
Summary: Like the Lion Stout, except sweeter and less interesting. And nearly three times as expensive.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Vacation Roundup: Starr Hill The Love and Dark Starr
Charlottesville is probably my favorite town (well, city) in Virginia. Admittedly, this probably isn't saying much. Everywhere around DC is more or less a suburban office park nightmare, absorbing all the petty malice and mutual unconcern radiating off of I-495 - the notorious Capital Beltway, the most hateful road on the east coast and an entity which feeds from the souls of all existing within many miles of it. The Virginia Beach area is a Navy town and a tourist trap, making me feel doubly out of place. Roanoke is located in the mountains (a plus), but is otherwise a bit boring somehow. Richmond is, well, hopeless. I'm tempted to pick Luray (foothill heaven, and mere miles away from Skyline Drive and the astonishing US-211, i.e. two of the best roads in Virginia), or maybe Leesburg or Williamsburg (for the simple joy of the colonial architecture). But on points, it's gotta be Charlottesville. It does the historic town thing almost as well, it's close to the mountains, it's actually got some culture, and they even like to drink a little. But this raises a question: can they brew a good beer?
To find out, I bought a pair of brews from Starr Hill while I was out east a few months back. The Starr Hill brewery is actually located a few miles west of Charlottesville (in Crozet), and they're surprisingly ubiquitous in the mideast states (I found some sixers of these as far down as North Carolina). I've got a The Love, which is a hefeweizen with a silly name, and a Dark Starr, which is a dry stout. So, let's start with the wheatbeer first.
Here's the first bit of news: the label is pink. At their site for the beer Starr Hill boasts that this stuff is made from an award-winning German yeast handed over by a friend. Someone "shared the love" with them, get it? Yes, yes, we see the pun, fine. But I would have titled the beer "Starr Hill Thank You," made the cover a big thumbs up to Germany, and saved myself the trouble. And I certainly wouldn't have made the label pink. Gah.
Pour it into a glass, though, and things start to get better: it's got a lovely cloudy-gold look, pretty much standard for the style, with a nice yeasty two-finger white head. And it's a sticky head too: with an ABV of only 4.6% (on the low side by wheatbeer standards), there's really not much to pull it back down. The aroma is very lemon-limey, with a hit of yeast further back; agitate it a bit and it shifts more in a banana direction. It's quite a simple aroma for a weiss, but there's nothing that's turning me off so far.
The taste carries through on the promise of the lemony aroma - it's a kind of yeasty lemonade, although obviously without the sweetness. Right up front is a pleasant tarty tang, which maintains itself right up to the end. Around there a wheaty taste butts in, along with some cloves and cilantro. No real hoppiness here, although I wasn't expecting it. The aftertaste, for the most part, is just more citrusy goodness. And... frankly, I'm struggling to think of anything more to say. Body's pretty light. No sense of the alcohol at all. It's a very refreshing taste, as these sorts of things tend to be, but there's also nothing at all to set this apart from the crowd.
Well, I didn't taste much love to be honest, but it's not bad. There's only one way to describe The Love: it is a Hefeweizen. And that means: if you like hefeweizens, you will think this one's pretty okay. It will do just fine by you, and you will immediately forget it exists after you finish drinking it. Such is its fate.
Now, onto the Dark Starr Stout. Unlike the self-consciously goofy The Love, this beer's a little more serious. The bottle's all murdered out, looking scary and muscular like a 1974 Challenger. Check the stats, though, and you discover that this black-bottled terror is actually a bit of a softie: it's 4.81% ABV, only a touch above Guinness and Murphy's (heck, the Black Hawk - still my go-to dry stout - is well into the low 5% range). So I'm expecting this to be more of a pub beer, more of a filling but unobtrusive bit of black matter that'll provide just the slightest lubricant for an evening with the boys.
Oh. Man, that's not what this is at all.
It's black, to be sure; it's got a medium viscosity and a half-finger head, to be sure; but this isn't a good old fashioned Irish stout. The aroma is, well, not what I expected at all. The strangest thing to the aroma is a strong, almost meaty quality, as if there's some grilled pork in there or something. It's not something I've encountered before, and I don't really dig it. Beyond that there's some coffee, lots of roasted malts, and an odd sourness that I can't pin down.
And the taste? Err, well, it's dry, give it that much. But beyond that everything's gone wrong. For starters, it's incredibly watery. The sourness from the aroma is also here (not something I really want in a stout). And then there's the worst part: from the very first sip one is inundated with a consistently cloying, smokey, ashy taste. Way back there, behind the wall of smoke, I can tell there are some good traditional stouty flavors, but there's really no digging them out. The aftertaste is indeed dry, but that's not enough to chase away the unpleasant smoky-sourness
If ever one needed a textbook example of how not to use roasted malts, this would be it. I suppose it's unique, sure, but it's not good, especially if you plan on drinking a whole bottle. (Starr Hill touts this as their "most awarded beer." I can only assume the judges all just did the sip-and-spit thing, because there's no way they would have medal'd this stuff if they'd had to suck down 12 ounces of it.) It's a watery, burned-out answer to a question no one asked. If you really want a smoky beer, try an Aecht Schlenkerla Märzen; if you really want a dry stout from Virginia, try to broaden your horizons.
So: Charlottesville. Nice town, and they make not-so-great stouts and also a Hefeweizen. I'll see if I can learn more on my next trip, I guess.
Starr Hill The Love
Grade: B-
Summary: It meets hefeweizen expectations.
Starr Hill Dark Starr
Grade: C-
Summary: Not so much a dry stout as a watery, ashy mess. Unique enough for the curious, but unpleasant to finish.
To find out, I bought a pair of brews from Starr Hill while I was out east a few months back. The Starr Hill brewery is actually located a few miles west of Charlottesville (in Crozet), and they're surprisingly ubiquitous in the mideast states (I found some sixers of these as far down as North Carolina). I've got a The Love, which is a hefeweizen with a silly name, and a Dark Starr, which is a dry stout. So, let's start with the wheatbeer first.
Here's the first bit of news: the label is pink. At their site for the beer Starr Hill boasts that this stuff is made from an award-winning German yeast handed over by a friend. Someone "shared the love" with them, get it? Yes, yes, we see the pun, fine. But I would have titled the beer "Starr Hill Thank You," made the cover a big thumbs up to Germany, and saved myself the trouble. And I certainly wouldn't have made the label pink. Gah.
Pour it into a glass, though, and things start to get better: it's got a lovely cloudy-gold look, pretty much standard for the style, with a nice yeasty two-finger white head. And it's a sticky head too: with an ABV of only 4.6% (on the low side by wheatbeer standards), there's really not much to pull it back down. The aroma is very lemon-limey, with a hit of yeast further back; agitate it a bit and it shifts more in a banana direction. It's quite a simple aroma for a weiss, but there's nothing that's turning me off so far.
The taste carries through on the promise of the lemony aroma - it's a kind of yeasty lemonade, although obviously without the sweetness. Right up front is a pleasant tarty tang, which maintains itself right up to the end. Around there a wheaty taste butts in, along with some cloves and cilantro. No real hoppiness here, although I wasn't expecting it. The aftertaste, for the most part, is just more citrusy goodness. And... frankly, I'm struggling to think of anything more to say. Body's pretty light. No sense of the alcohol at all. It's a very refreshing taste, as these sorts of things tend to be, but there's also nothing at all to set this apart from the crowd.
Well, I didn't taste much love to be honest, but it's not bad. There's only one way to describe The Love: it is a Hefeweizen. And that means: if you like hefeweizens, you will think this one's pretty okay. It will do just fine by you, and you will immediately forget it exists after you finish drinking it. Such is its fate.
Now, onto the Dark Starr Stout. Unlike the self-consciously goofy The Love, this beer's a little more serious. The bottle's all murdered out, looking scary and muscular like a 1974 Challenger. Check the stats, though, and you discover that this black-bottled terror is actually a bit of a softie: it's 4.81% ABV, only a touch above Guinness and Murphy's (heck, the Black Hawk - still my go-to dry stout - is well into the low 5% range). So I'm expecting this to be more of a pub beer, more of a filling but unobtrusive bit of black matter that'll provide just the slightest lubricant for an evening with the boys.
Oh. Man, that's not what this is at all.
It's black, to be sure; it's got a medium viscosity and a half-finger head, to be sure; but this isn't a good old fashioned Irish stout. The aroma is, well, not what I expected at all. The strangest thing to the aroma is a strong, almost meaty quality, as if there's some grilled pork in there or something. It's not something I've encountered before, and I don't really dig it. Beyond that there's some coffee, lots of roasted malts, and an odd sourness that I can't pin down.
And the taste? Err, well, it's dry, give it that much. But beyond that everything's gone wrong. For starters, it's incredibly watery. The sourness from the aroma is also here (not something I really want in a stout). And then there's the worst part: from the very first sip one is inundated with a consistently cloying, smokey, ashy taste. Way back there, behind the wall of smoke, I can tell there are some good traditional stouty flavors, but there's really no digging them out. The aftertaste is indeed dry, but that's not enough to chase away the unpleasant smoky-sourness
If ever one needed a textbook example of how not to use roasted malts, this would be it. I suppose it's unique, sure, but it's not good, especially if you plan on drinking a whole bottle. (Starr Hill touts this as their "most awarded beer." I can only assume the judges all just did the sip-and-spit thing, because there's no way they would have medal'd this stuff if they'd had to suck down 12 ounces of it.) It's a watery, burned-out answer to a question no one asked. If you really want a smoky beer, try an Aecht Schlenkerla Märzen; if you really want a dry stout from Virginia, try to broaden your horizons.
So: Charlottesville. Nice town, and they make not-so-great stouts and also a Hefeweizen. I'll see if I can learn more on my next trip, I guess.
Starr Hill The Love
Grade: B-
Summary: It meets hefeweizen expectations.
Starr Hill Dark Starr
Grade: C-
Summary: Not so much a dry stout as a watery, ashy mess. Unique enough for the curious, but unpleasant to finish.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Vacation Roundup: Asheville Ninja Porter, Olde Hickory Hickory Stick Stout, and Pisgah Porter
I watched Stalker (aka CTANKEP) for the first time a couple of months ago. I loved it. I could go into some specifics about what makes it so amazing, but suffice it to say it's just a brilliant, beautiful movie; it somehow manages to be thought-provoking without shoving things down one's throat. It's a great movie, and a thoroughly unique one.
Thing is, though, I wouldn't watch it every day. Hell, I wouldn't watch it every month.
This in itself seems to be enough to make questionable certain kinds of metaphysical assumptions; I am thinking in particular of Whitehead and process philosophy more generally. This position is generally not taken very seriously anymore, nor even particularly well understood, and I shall not try to describe it generally. One key feature to all metaphysical positions of this sort (broadly speaking), is that the work of "becoming" has to have an aim of some sort. Every entity, in the short moment of its being an entity, makes a 'decision' (in a very broad sense of the term) based on the various prevailing possibilities available to it. The thought goes that this 'decision' cannot be made at random, but must have some kind of telos. Whitehead says, for example, that "'becoming' is a creative advance into novelty" - by which he means, to grossly simplify, that the the cosmos as a whole, in all its diversity, must have an increase of novelty as its final aim. The 'decisions' of all entities, although never perfect, gravitate towards the novel. This must be as true of us as of anything else. Becoming, as such, is aesthetical. But why, then, should I prefer to watch something worse - Con Air, maybe - over Stalker? Surely I would say that Stalker is not only a finer film, but a more novel one. But I could watch Nicholas Cage sidekick dudes with a mullet all day, whereas Stalker is more of a once-a-year kind of thing. I spend hours watching dumb clips on Youtube, when a priori at least I should be watching City of God or something.
Now, in all fairness, I'm sure a sufficiently clever process thinker may find some way to explain away these particular examples as perfectly consistent with their position, but there's a more fundamental point that (it seems to me) still stands. Process philosophy attempts to understand every entity, every little scrap of being, as an instance of production, working, making, poiesis - in a cosmos where we ourselves are not always "at work." Hell, we aren't always even comfortable working. On the contrary, human beings have an orientation towards leisure which is at least as fundamental. I won't tease out any further what that means, at least not today, but it seems to me important to take note of. After all, as I never tire of pointing out, leisure is the first condition for philosophy.
With that in mind, then, I'd like to try out a trio of leisurely beers - two porters and a stout. These beers are all sold in deuce-deuce bottles, cost roughly the same, and are all made somewhere around Asheville. Seems like prime material for a roundup.
The first beer is the Ninja Porter from the Asheville Brewing Company. It's, well, a big bottle with a friggin' ninja on the label. It's dopey, but it's not like they were going for anything else. Maybe they were wise to do this. Really: if you passed a beer with a ninja on the label in your local shop, could you pass it up?
Out of the bottle it pours almost completely black, with just a trace of ruby at the sides if held up to a light. Not much of a head on this one either: I get a half-finger at first, which quickly dies down into a coppery froth. It does smell pretty damn good, though: milk chocolate right out front, flanked by some roasted malts and just enough fruitiness to keep things interesting. Further down in the back I also get raisins and a little bit of banana bread. No trace of hops, really, just a thick dollop of dark malty goodness.
I can report, verbatim, that my first words upon sipping this porter were "ooh, that's kind of nice." In a lot of ways this reminds me of the Bell's Special Double Cream Stout I had a few weeks ago (which was, I note again, neither creamy nor very special), except it's lighter, slightly more interesting, and a heck of a lot easier to drink. The cacao flavors from the roasted malt are dominant, but they're relieved by some honey, raisin nut bread, and sweet chocolate tastes. The word of the day here is "balanced." The taste up front features a mild coffee sting - no sweetness at all. Towards the middle the bitter coffee/cacao flavors remain in command, but at the same moment they're contested by a sugary-but-burntastic counterpart - almost a cola flavor, if you wish. By the end the cola develops into a molasses-and-chocolate kinda thing, which closes out on equal footing with the roasted malts (united in harmony to keep out the hops). The aftertaste is a bit cloying, really - imagine you've just had a not-so-great cup of sweetened black tea - but doesn't detract much from the rest of the beer. In terms of texture, it's about average for a porter. That is to say, those of us weaning ourselves off of Miller High Life are going to think they're drinking a loaf of sourdough, and those of us coming from a couple of imperial stouts are going to find it pleasantly light.
Me, I'm in the "pleasantly light" camp. I find this beer to be, as it were, not "exciting" or "interesting" (it isn't - if you've been around your English ales long enough, you know these flavors) so much as "refreshing." If I'd just crawled into the Asheville Brewing restaurant after a day climbing around the local mountains, this is the beer I'd want to have. It's not incredible - it's a bubble bath, if you like. It's just there to be kind of idly comforting. It's the When Harry Met Sally of beers, and it gets a B.
Next up on the plate is the Hickory Stick Stout from the Olde Hickory Brewery. Hickory is a city a ways east of Asheville, down in the foothills. You can think of it as Asheville's more workmanlike, less trendy, significantly less hippy big brother. I like to imagine that when they get together for holidays and such, Hickory tries to tell boring stories about the other guys working at the plant and Asheville has to spend ten minutes explaining why stuffing cooked in Hickory's turkey is no longer vegetarian.
Where was I? Oh, right. Anyways, the bottle has a reasonably pretty forest design on it.
Like the Ninja it pours real, real dark, albeit not "totally black" (as the side of the bottle would have you believe). Again, no real head to speak of - I get a little bit of tan fizz for a moment, which then settles back down again to leave a thin film. Hmm. The aroma, likewise, is pretty subdued - lots of milk chocolate in there, cut through with some coffee. None of the fruitiness from the ninja porter, but there's definitely some hops in there this time. It's a very vague aroma, really - I don't know what I'm getting with this one.
Well, now! This, too, produced an "Ooh, that's nice." The flavor development is very odd on this - it doesn't go at all how one would expect it to, but in a good way. It starts off with a tiny bit of a coffee tingle on the tongue, then develops a lovely hot cocoa kind of taste in the middle. Then, all of a sudden, WHAM. Roasted malts rush in like a flash flood, intermixed with a small measure of grapefruity west coast hops, all of it fusing with the already-established sweet malt flavors. It's rather as if your hot chocolate somehow got two shots of espresso and a lemon into it as you were drinking the stuff. The aftertaste is pretty dry, mainly carring over the roasted flavors. It's an unusual flavor line, then, but it grows on you quickly.
The Ninja Porter may be more refreshing, but this is the better beer. It's more creative, it's got more going on; it's the sort of thing you can show off to your friends (trust me, they haven't tried this one before). Hell, it would even work pretty well as a holiday beer. Actually, in some ways this is the most festive brew I've had since my buying spree - and that's with a couple of Christmas ales and winter warmers under my belt.
Unfortunately, however, it does not have a ninja on the label. No beer is perfect. But it gets a B+ anyways.
Finally there's the last of our trio of Asheville area bombers, which is another porter. This one, the Pisgah Porter, is from the Pisgah Brewing Company in Black Mountain, and it claims to be "Asheville's best selling beer." Hmm, I don't know about that, not as long as the big boys with their crap lager are still around. On the other hand, this claim is in fact the most interesting thing on the label. The rest of it is pretty nondescript. You get a kind of light brown color on most of the label, and then right in the center there's the "Pisgah" name and a shot of a river running downhill amidst a forest. It's the sort of picture one expects to find on a blue-coded Magic: The Gathering card, really. I kind of prefer the Ninja's label. Anyways, moving on...
Well, like the previous porter, this pours a nice dark ruby color (hold it up to a light and you can see hints of red at the sides). Also like the others, there's no real head here either - just a miserable half-finger that quickly disappears. The aroma is actually a bit stronger, although simpler as well: most of it, again, is chocolate milk, relieved by a little bit of earth and roastiness. No real hoppiness this time. That's really all there is to it in terms of character, but - again - it comes across as about twice as strong as the others. And now I taste it...
...Wha-a-at?
I don't want to think that I got a bad bottle somehow, but I can't imagine the beer is supposed to taste like this. If the Hickory stout takes a hard, powerslidy left turn halfway through the mouth, this one hits a tree. Hard. I mean, it starts off very nicely: there's coffee with cream and sugar on the front end, then a milky bittersweetness as it approaches the middle. And then it just kind of ends. The flavor falls off completely, leaving almost no aftertaste. It's not a dry finish or anything - there is no finish. You might be able to detect some slight sweetness and an odd, almost minty coolness, but that's it; it's like the beer just evaporates.
I simply have no idea what's going on with this beer. The flavor development is the closest any brew has ever come to coitus interruptus. I guess I can say the body is medium to thin and that it might pair well with some barbecue or something. Because it is, and it would. But saying that is just to cover how mystified I am by a beer that somehow steals itself out of my mouth the moment I swallow it. Does anyone understand this? What is happening here? What the fuck is going on?
I almost feel like I shouldn't grade this. I don't like it, but at the same time I can't get my brain around what they were doing here. If this is some kind of new self-cleaning beer, it's brilliant. If it's just an attempt at a decent porter, it's well short of the mark. I'll assume it's the latter.
Asheville Ninja Porter
Grade: B
Summary: It may have a ninja on the label, but inside it's a big teddy bear.
Olde Hickory Hickory Stick Stout
Grade: B+
Summary: A delicious and oddball surprise. Not quite world class, but different enough to chase down if you get a chance.
Pisgah Porter
Grade: D+
Summary: It's the Amazing Evaporating Porter!
Thing is, though, I wouldn't watch it every day. Hell, I wouldn't watch it every month.
This in itself seems to be enough to make questionable certain kinds of metaphysical assumptions; I am thinking in particular of Whitehead and process philosophy more generally. This position is generally not taken very seriously anymore, nor even particularly well understood, and I shall not try to describe it generally. One key feature to all metaphysical positions of this sort (broadly speaking), is that the work of "becoming" has to have an aim of some sort. Every entity, in the short moment of its being an entity, makes a 'decision' (in a very broad sense of the term) based on the various prevailing possibilities available to it. The thought goes that this 'decision' cannot be made at random, but must have some kind of telos. Whitehead says, for example, that "'becoming' is a creative advance into novelty" - by which he means, to grossly simplify, that the the cosmos as a whole, in all its diversity, must have an increase of novelty as its final aim. The 'decisions' of all entities, although never perfect, gravitate towards the novel. This must be as true of us as of anything else. Becoming, as such, is aesthetical. But why, then, should I prefer to watch something worse - Con Air, maybe - over Stalker? Surely I would say that Stalker is not only a finer film, but a more novel one. But I could watch Nicholas Cage sidekick dudes with a mullet all day, whereas Stalker is more of a once-a-year kind of thing. I spend hours watching dumb clips on Youtube, when a priori at least I should be watching City of God or something.
Now, in all fairness, I'm sure a sufficiently clever process thinker may find some way to explain away these particular examples as perfectly consistent with their position, but there's a more fundamental point that (it seems to me) still stands. Process philosophy attempts to understand every entity, every little scrap of being, as an instance of production, working, making, poiesis - in a cosmos where we ourselves are not always "at work." Hell, we aren't always even comfortable working. On the contrary, human beings have an orientation towards leisure which is at least as fundamental. I won't tease out any further what that means, at least not today, but it seems to me important to take note of. After all, as I never tire of pointing out, leisure is the first condition for philosophy.
With that in mind, then, I'd like to try out a trio of leisurely beers - two porters and a stout. These beers are all sold in deuce-deuce bottles, cost roughly the same, and are all made somewhere around Asheville. Seems like prime material for a roundup.
The first beer is the Ninja Porter from the Asheville Brewing Company. It's, well, a big bottle with a friggin' ninja on the label. It's dopey, but it's not like they were going for anything else. Maybe they were wise to do this. Really: if you passed a beer with a ninja on the label in your local shop, could you pass it up?
Out of the bottle it pours almost completely black, with just a trace of ruby at the sides if held up to a light. Not much of a head on this one either: I get a half-finger at first, which quickly dies down into a coppery froth. It does smell pretty damn good, though: milk chocolate right out front, flanked by some roasted malts and just enough fruitiness to keep things interesting. Further down in the back I also get raisins and a little bit of banana bread. No trace of hops, really, just a thick dollop of dark malty goodness.
I can report, verbatim, that my first words upon sipping this porter were "ooh, that's kind of nice." In a lot of ways this reminds me of the Bell's Special Double Cream Stout I had a few weeks ago (which was, I note again, neither creamy nor very special), except it's lighter, slightly more interesting, and a heck of a lot easier to drink. The cacao flavors from the roasted malt are dominant, but they're relieved by some honey, raisin nut bread, and sweet chocolate tastes. The word of the day here is "balanced." The taste up front features a mild coffee sting - no sweetness at all. Towards the middle the bitter coffee/cacao flavors remain in command, but at the same moment they're contested by a sugary-but-burntastic counterpart - almost a cola flavor, if you wish. By the end the cola develops into a molasses-and-chocolate kinda thing, which closes out on equal footing with the roasted malts (united in harmony to keep out the hops). The aftertaste is a bit cloying, really - imagine you've just had a not-so-great cup of sweetened black tea - but doesn't detract much from the rest of the beer. In terms of texture, it's about average for a porter. That is to say, those of us weaning ourselves off of Miller High Life are going to think they're drinking a loaf of sourdough, and those of us coming from a couple of imperial stouts are going to find it pleasantly light.
Me, I'm in the "pleasantly light" camp. I find this beer to be, as it were, not "exciting" or "interesting" (it isn't - if you've been around your English ales long enough, you know these flavors) so much as "refreshing." If I'd just crawled into the Asheville Brewing restaurant after a day climbing around the local mountains, this is the beer I'd want to have. It's not incredible - it's a bubble bath, if you like. It's just there to be kind of idly comforting. It's the When Harry Met Sally of beers, and it gets a B.
Next up on the plate is the Hickory Stick Stout from the Olde Hickory Brewery. Hickory is a city a ways east of Asheville, down in the foothills. You can think of it as Asheville's more workmanlike, less trendy, significantly less hippy big brother. I like to imagine that when they get together for holidays and such, Hickory tries to tell boring stories about the other guys working at the plant and Asheville has to spend ten minutes explaining why stuffing cooked in Hickory's turkey is no longer vegetarian.
Where was I? Oh, right. Anyways, the bottle has a reasonably pretty forest design on it.
Like the Ninja it pours real, real dark, albeit not "totally black" (as the side of the bottle would have you believe). Again, no real head to speak of - I get a little bit of tan fizz for a moment, which then settles back down again to leave a thin film. Hmm. The aroma, likewise, is pretty subdued - lots of milk chocolate in there, cut through with some coffee. None of the fruitiness from the ninja porter, but there's definitely some hops in there this time. It's a very vague aroma, really - I don't know what I'm getting with this one.
Well, now! This, too, produced an "Ooh, that's nice." The flavor development is very odd on this - it doesn't go at all how one would expect it to, but in a good way. It starts off with a tiny bit of a coffee tingle on the tongue, then develops a lovely hot cocoa kind of taste in the middle. Then, all of a sudden, WHAM. Roasted malts rush in like a flash flood, intermixed with a small measure of grapefruity west coast hops, all of it fusing with the already-established sweet malt flavors. It's rather as if your hot chocolate somehow got two shots of espresso and a lemon into it as you were drinking the stuff. The aftertaste is pretty dry, mainly carring over the roasted flavors. It's an unusual flavor line, then, but it grows on you quickly.
The Ninja Porter may be more refreshing, but this is the better beer. It's more creative, it's got more going on; it's the sort of thing you can show off to your friends (trust me, they haven't tried this one before). Hell, it would even work pretty well as a holiday beer. Actually, in some ways this is the most festive brew I've had since my buying spree - and that's with a couple of Christmas ales and winter warmers under my belt.
Unfortunately, however, it does not have a ninja on the label. No beer is perfect. But it gets a B+ anyways.
Finally there's the last of our trio of Asheville area bombers, which is another porter. This one, the Pisgah Porter, is from the Pisgah Brewing Company in Black Mountain, and it claims to be "Asheville's best selling beer." Hmm, I don't know about that, not as long as the big boys with their crap lager are still around. On the other hand, this claim is in fact the most interesting thing on the label. The rest of it is pretty nondescript. You get a kind of light brown color on most of the label, and then right in the center there's the "Pisgah" name and a shot of a river running downhill amidst a forest. It's the sort of picture one expects to find on a blue-coded Magic: The Gathering card, really. I kind of prefer the Ninja's label. Anyways, moving on...
Well, like the previous porter, this pours a nice dark ruby color (hold it up to a light and you can see hints of red at the sides). Also like the others, there's no real head here either - just a miserable half-finger that quickly disappears. The aroma is actually a bit stronger, although simpler as well: most of it, again, is chocolate milk, relieved by a little bit of earth and roastiness. No real hoppiness this time. That's really all there is to it in terms of character, but - again - it comes across as about twice as strong as the others. And now I taste it...
...Wha-a-at?
I don't want to think that I got a bad bottle somehow, but I can't imagine the beer is supposed to taste like this. If the Hickory stout takes a hard, powerslidy left turn halfway through the mouth, this one hits a tree. Hard. I mean, it starts off very nicely: there's coffee with cream and sugar on the front end, then a milky bittersweetness as it approaches the middle. And then it just kind of ends. The flavor falls off completely, leaving almost no aftertaste. It's not a dry finish or anything - there is no finish. You might be able to detect some slight sweetness and an odd, almost minty coolness, but that's it; it's like the beer just evaporates.
I simply have no idea what's going on with this beer. The flavor development is the closest any brew has ever come to coitus interruptus. I guess I can say the body is medium to thin and that it might pair well with some barbecue or something. Because it is, and it would. But saying that is just to cover how mystified I am by a beer that somehow steals itself out of my mouth the moment I swallow it. Does anyone understand this? What is happening here? What the fuck is going on?
I almost feel like I shouldn't grade this. I don't like it, but at the same time I can't get my brain around what they were doing here. If this is some kind of new self-cleaning beer, it's brilliant. If it's just an attempt at a decent porter, it's well short of the mark. I'll assume it's the latter.
Asheville Ninja Porter
Grade: B
Summary: It may have a ninja on the label, but inside it's a big teddy bear.
Olde Hickory Hickory Stick Stout
Grade: B+
Summary: A delicious and oddball surprise. Not quite world class, but different enough to chase down if you get a chance.
Pisgah Porter
Grade: D+
Summary: It's the Amazing Evaporating Porter!
Monday, December 21, 2009
Review: Bluegrass Jefferson's Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout and Kona Pipeline Porter
I'd like to talk about a distinction between enhancement and gussying-up. Both of these things broadly amount to a sort of addition - you have one thing, and then you do something to it or put something else in it - but beyond that there remains a gap that makes all the difference.
Put it this way. A few weeks ago ago I took it upon myself to make my own oven-baked breaded chicken fingers. It was a complete disaster: they were greasy, overcooked, tough, and even smelled kind of funky. Not content to simply throw the things away, I took it upon myself to try eating them with whatever condiments were available. I gussied them up, in other words. Nothing worked: adding barbecue sauce, for example, simply made them taste like really awful chicken fingers with barbecue sauce on them. Spicy mustard, honey, even an unbelievably delicious cranberry sauce I had invented around thanksgiving - all of this simply sat on top of the fingers without changing their whatness, their terrible essence, in any way.
Now compare this situation to another, one which you might have heard of. Take some gin, i.e. some grain alcohol with a ton of juniper in it, and slosh it around with some herbally-infused wine and a lot of ice. Now strain out the ice and add an olive. It shouldn't be any good, should it? Gin, on its own, is fairly unenjoyable (it was made popular as a dirt-cheap alternative to beer for the British peasant, after all). Even vodka has a long, proud tradition of drinking on rocks or simply neat - not gin, though, not unless you're an alcoholic from the isles. So, in any case, we're not starting off with something particularly promising here. Nevertheless, add that herby wine in just the right proportions and drop in an olive and you've got something that isn't nearly as horrible as it should be. Indeed, you've got something spectacular: the dry martini. The gin, which on its own tastes like an evergreen tree mopping a floor, is mellowed and transformed by the vermouth. As a result you get something crisp and cold and sour and spicy. You get what is still one of the best aperitif cocktails in existence - just don't drink one right after eating, for god's sake, and not at all in amounts larger than two ounces or so (unless you feel like having dinner while nursing a sizable drunk). The dry martini, then, is an enhancement. The gin is transformed by what is done to it and added to it - not that it ceases to be gin, but it is gin in a certain sense sublated to a nobler status.
I have here two beers: the Jefferson's Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout made by the Bluegrass Brewing Company, and the Pipeline Porter made by Kona out in Hawaii. Both of these are examples of brews that have had something done to them. Both are examples of addition in the broad sense. The thing is, one of these additions works, and the other doesn't. One of these beers is very good, and the other isn't. So which is which?
The BBS is, as the name might imply, an imperial stout that's been aged in a bourbon barrel. I've had two examples of this style before: the Walter Payton attempt (which I liked) and the Goose Island version (which is probably the best beer I've had all year). I'm expecting good things from this, in other words. According to the website, this stuff has been in the wood for 60 days - not very long at all compared to the others, but presumably still enough to suck up some bourbon character. More weirdly, it's only rated at 8% ABV. That's slightly low even by imperial stout standards, and really low for a barrel stout. Oh, well, at least it comes with an atttractive barrel-themed label (wood grains and all).
Off goes the cap. It pours very black, but surprisingly it's not particularly thick - by appearance it just sort of looks like a middle-of-the-range stout, really, not the monster I've been expecting. Even more oddly, it's got a head. And a big one at that: I get three fingers' worth of tan bubbles from this stuff. I got nothing of the sort from the other two barrel stouts, and that probably says more about the BBC take's alcohol content than anything. The aroma is, well, subdued. Initially it's very much like the Payton and the Goose Island, except at about a tenth of the power. Underneath the sweet bourbon, oak, and vanilla smells, though, I detect more conventional stout flavors. It's kind of a dull coffee and cacao mixture, really. Hrmm.
If the aroma is disappointing, though, that's nothing compared to the taste. First imagine a day-old pile of bonfire ashes; now imagine pouring a shot of Beam over it. There, you've now got a pretty good idea of what this beer tastes like. There's a little bit of bourbon in this, to be sure, but you only really get it at the end. The rest is just a kind of dull charred maltiness. Up front I get a slight bitter tingle, which then expands into that not-very-pleasant burned flavor. This mostly holds steady until the aftertaste, when the vanilla-y bourbon sweetness finally (finally) pierces its way through. Even then, though, the ash still dominates. The aftertaste is pretty much the most pleasant aspect of the beer, really, and it doesn't even last that long. I'll grant them this: it's probably an easier beer to drink than the Payton or the Goose Island. It's not as heavy nor as strong, but the price you pay is that it's quite boring and not very good to drink.
What Bluegrass has here, then, is a questionable stout that's not very good to drink - I half suspect they took a flamethrower to the malt before they brewed it, although I can't confirm this - which they tried to fix by hosing it into a bourbon barrel for a couple of months. It hasn't really worked. Rather than turning a mediocre beer into a good one, they've just added a few new all-too-thin bourbony flavors to their mediocre beer. They've gussied it up, in other words. I suppose it's better than it might have been otherwise, but there's no getting around how ultimately disappointing this stuff is. C+, and that might be too generous.
Now for the Kona porter, and I'll get to the most important thing right away: this is a coffee beer. I don't much care for this style - in fact, I think many of the more prominent examples (e.g., the Founders) are overdone disasters in which all the flavors are drowned out by the weed from Ethiopia. So I'm biased against the Pipeline Porter from the beginning. And yet rather than a gigantic hideous baby, it's got a friendly baby blue surfing-themed design on its label. It looks friendly, it looks irreferent, it looks like something that one might actually want to drink...
In fairly standard fashion, it pours a moderately viscous auburn - a little bit of light gets through this stuff, but not a whole lot. It has a lovely one and a half finger tan head, too, and that's nice. But what's nicer is the aroma, which is - not too put the point too carefully - the greatest smell I've ever had from a coffee beer. For once, the joe doesn't take over completely! Instead there's a melding and a partnership between it and a rich roasted malt aroma. I get chocolate milk, brown sugar, and fresh oatmeal at first, and only when I scent deeper does the coffee cut in - enhancing the aroma rather than taking it over. Like the BBS, there's no trace of hops (but who cares?).
Honestly, the taste is a slight letdown after the smell. This time the coffee takes the lead - take a sip and its bitter edge hits the tongue right away. The notes of joe retain their dominance, on an increasingly shaky basis, all through the middle and the finish, where molasses notes start trying to pull it away (there's also a brief poke from the hops to remind you that you're drinking a porter, but they've clearly only got a bit part). Only a few moments after you swallow does the roasted malty sweetness really overcome its coffee rival, leaving a long and very pleasant aftertaste. Not as good as the aroma, then, but still very nice. Even the texture is about right for a porter - not too thick, not too watery.
This, then, is how you make a coffee beer. I have no illusions about this being the end-all, be-all of the style, mind. I think it can be done better. But at the moment, the Pipeline Porter is the one to beat; this beer is the yardstick. What the Kona folks had was a very solid porter to begin with that they then enhanced with, of all things, a touch of joe. And, through some impossible warlockery, they didn't screw it up. That minor miracle is enough to make this beer special; the fact that it's probably one of the best winter beers around makes it even moreso.
Bluegrass Jefferson's Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout
Grade: C+
Summary: Take a used bourbon barrel and light it on fire. Put some of the remaining ashes in a widemouth. Bingo.
Kona Pipeline Porter
Grade: A-
Summary: It's the glaznost of coffee beers. Joe and malt flavors working together towards mutual interests, leading to global peace.
Put it this way. A few weeks ago ago I took it upon myself to make my own oven-baked breaded chicken fingers. It was a complete disaster: they were greasy, overcooked, tough, and even smelled kind of funky. Not content to simply throw the things away, I took it upon myself to try eating them with whatever condiments were available. I gussied them up, in other words. Nothing worked: adding barbecue sauce, for example, simply made them taste like really awful chicken fingers with barbecue sauce on them. Spicy mustard, honey, even an unbelievably delicious cranberry sauce I had invented around thanksgiving - all of this simply sat on top of the fingers without changing their whatness, their terrible essence, in any way.
Now compare this situation to another, one which you might have heard of. Take some gin, i.e. some grain alcohol with a ton of juniper in it, and slosh it around with some herbally-infused wine and a lot of ice. Now strain out the ice and add an olive. It shouldn't be any good, should it? Gin, on its own, is fairly unenjoyable (it was made popular as a dirt-cheap alternative to beer for the British peasant, after all). Even vodka has a long, proud tradition of drinking on rocks or simply neat - not gin, though, not unless you're an alcoholic from the isles. So, in any case, we're not starting off with something particularly promising here. Nevertheless, add that herby wine in just the right proportions and drop in an olive and you've got something that isn't nearly as horrible as it should be. Indeed, you've got something spectacular: the dry martini. The gin, which on its own tastes like an evergreen tree mopping a floor, is mellowed and transformed by the vermouth. As a result you get something crisp and cold and sour and spicy. You get what is still one of the best aperitif cocktails in existence - just don't drink one right after eating, for god's sake, and not at all in amounts larger than two ounces or so (unless you feel like having dinner while nursing a sizable drunk). The dry martini, then, is an enhancement. The gin is transformed by what is done to it and added to it - not that it ceases to be gin, but it is gin in a certain sense sublated to a nobler status.
I have here two beers: the Jefferson's Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout made by the Bluegrass Brewing Company, and the Pipeline Porter made by Kona out in Hawaii. Both of these are examples of brews that have had something done to them. Both are examples of addition in the broad sense. The thing is, one of these additions works, and the other doesn't. One of these beers is very good, and the other isn't. So which is which?
The BBS is, as the name might imply, an imperial stout that's been aged in a bourbon barrel. I've had two examples of this style before: the Walter Payton attempt (which I liked) and the Goose Island version (which is probably the best beer I've had all year). I'm expecting good things from this, in other words. According to the website, this stuff has been in the wood for 60 days - not very long at all compared to the others, but presumably still enough to suck up some bourbon character. More weirdly, it's only rated at 8% ABV. That's slightly low even by imperial stout standards, and really low for a barrel stout. Oh, well, at least it comes with an atttractive barrel-themed label (wood grains and all).
Off goes the cap. It pours very black, but surprisingly it's not particularly thick - by appearance it just sort of looks like a middle-of-the-range stout, really, not the monster I've been expecting. Even more oddly, it's got a head. And a big one at that: I get three fingers' worth of tan bubbles from this stuff. I got nothing of the sort from the other two barrel stouts, and that probably says more about the BBC take's alcohol content than anything. The aroma is, well, subdued. Initially it's very much like the Payton and the Goose Island, except at about a tenth of the power. Underneath the sweet bourbon, oak, and vanilla smells, though, I detect more conventional stout flavors. It's kind of a dull coffee and cacao mixture, really. Hrmm.
If the aroma is disappointing, though, that's nothing compared to the taste. First imagine a day-old pile of bonfire ashes; now imagine pouring a shot of Beam over it. There, you've now got a pretty good idea of what this beer tastes like. There's a little bit of bourbon in this, to be sure, but you only really get it at the end. The rest is just a kind of dull charred maltiness. Up front I get a slight bitter tingle, which then expands into that not-very-pleasant burned flavor. This mostly holds steady until the aftertaste, when the vanilla-y bourbon sweetness finally (finally) pierces its way through. Even then, though, the ash still dominates. The aftertaste is pretty much the most pleasant aspect of the beer, really, and it doesn't even last that long. I'll grant them this: it's probably an easier beer to drink than the Payton or the Goose Island. It's not as heavy nor as strong, but the price you pay is that it's quite boring and not very good to drink.
What Bluegrass has here, then, is a questionable stout that's not very good to drink - I half suspect they took a flamethrower to the malt before they brewed it, although I can't confirm this - which they tried to fix by hosing it into a bourbon barrel for a couple of months. It hasn't really worked. Rather than turning a mediocre beer into a good one, they've just added a few new all-too-thin bourbony flavors to their mediocre beer. They've gussied it up, in other words. I suppose it's better than it might have been otherwise, but there's no getting around how ultimately disappointing this stuff is. C+, and that might be too generous.
Now for the Kona porter, and I'll get to the most important thing right away: this is a coffee beer. I don't much care for this style - in fact, I think many of the more prominent examples (e.g., the Founders) are overdone disasters in which all the flavors are drowned out by the weed from Ethiopia. So I'm biased against the Pipeline Porter from the beginning. And yet rather than a gigantic hideous baby, it's got a friendly baby blue surfing-themed design on its label. It looks friendly, it looks irreferent, it looks like something that one might actually want to drink...
In fairly standard fashion, it pours a moderately viscous auburn - a little bit of light gets through this stuff, but not a whole lot. It has a lovely one and a half finger tan head, too, and that's nice. But what's nicer is the aroma, which is - not too put the point too carefully - the greatest smell I've ever had from a coffee beer. For once, the joe doesn't take over completely! Instead there's a melding and a partnership between it and a rich roasted malt aroma. I get chocolate milk, brown sugar, and fresh oatmeal at first, and only when I scent deeper does the coffee cut in - enhancing the aroma rather than taking it over. Like the BBS, there's no trace of hops (but who cares?).
Honestly, the taste is a slight letdown after the smell. This time the coffee takes the lead - take a sip and its bitter edge hits the tongue right away. The notes of joe retain their dominance, on an increasingly shaky basis, all through the middle and the finish, where molasses notes start trying to pull it away (there's also a brief poke from the hops to remind you that you're drinking a porter, but they've clearly only got a bit part). Only a few moments after you swallow does the roasted malty sweetness really overcome its coffee rival, leaving a long and very pleasant aftertaste. Not as good as the aroma, then, but still very nice. Even the texture is about right for a porter - not too thick, not too watery.
This, then, is how you make a coffee beer. I have no illusions about this being the end-all, be-all of the style, mind. I think it can be done better. But at the moment, the Pipeline Porter is the one to beat; this beer is the yardstick. What the Kona folks had was a very solid porter to begin with that they then enhanced with, of all things, a touch of joe. And, through some impossible warlockery, they didn't screw it up. That minor miracle is enough to make this beer special; the fact that it's probably one of the best winter beers around makes it even moreso.
Bluegrass Jefferson's Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout
Grade: C+
Summary: Take a used bourbon barrel and light it on fire. Put some of the remaining ashes in a widemouth. Bingo.
Kona Pipeline Porter
Grade: A-
Summary: It's the glaznost of coffee beers. Joe and malt flavors working together towards mutual interests, leading to global peace.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
The Bell-a-thon: Bell's Rye Stout, Special Double Cream Stout, Expedition Stout, and Best Brown Ale
This might be my last update for awhile, given that A) I'm going out of town for winter break tomorrow and B) I doubt my folks are going to give me much time to write about alcohol until I get back. But it should be a good one.
So here's the deal. After much singles-buying and several people dropping off beer for Thanksgiving, I've now inexplicably got my hands on collection of four (4) different beers from Bell's Brewery. I didn't plan for this and I don't really know how this happened, (given that I don't typically buy Bell's), but here I am anyways. Funny enough, three of them are stouts as well (probably because Bell's has some crazy obsession with stouts - last I checked they sold about a dozen of the things during various parts of the year). All told, I've got me an Expedition Stout, a Special Double Cream Stout, a Rye Stout, and a Best Brown Ale. I'm hoping amazing things will happen, and dreading that they won't.
You see, I like to think of Bell's as something like the Toyota of the microbrewing world. I do this for several reasons. First: they're fairly ubiquitous. Toyota is the largest car company in the world, and while Bell's isn't quite up to that level, the upper midwest is still nevertheless utterly saturated with them. If any store around here sells any microbeer at all, they're going to sell Bell's. Second: they're reliable. I've never had a Bell's that's actually been bad, which is to their credit. Third: most of what they make is pretty boring. As examples of this I'll cite their Porter, Lager, and Pale Ale, all of which I've had sometime in the past year. All three of these beers are quite competent, practically flawless, and deeply unexciting examples of their styles. I wasn't exactly let down, I just felt like I was drinking... a porter, a lager, and a pale ale. With nothing much remotely interesting about them. If I ever have any of those beers again, I might review them - but it'd be hard. I think I'd come up with something along the lines of: "Yeah. Pretty good."
Those, then, are the three typical things. But there's one other thing about Toyota, and (indeed) about Bell's, that most people don't notice. And that's Point The Fourth: every once in awhile, when the mood is just right, they can and do go completely insane.
I could cite several moments from Toyota's occasional dives into madness. The original Scion xB, for example, or the 2000gt, or the upcoming Lexus LFA (which will cost three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars). But there's a much better example to be found. Way, way back in the glorious cocaine-and-Wham!-fuelled days of 1985, Toyota created something very special. Up until that year the company had mostly been making its name off of stuff like the Tercel and the Cressida - cars that never broke down, at the cost of being deeply dreary. And then it dropped this thing - the MR2. It was an instant masterpiece: a light, stripped-down, fingertippy, revvy, quite fast sporty coupe. Even better than that, it was (and still is) stunningly good-looking. In terms of its looks, the MR2 was like a Japanese Ferrari. No, not was like, but was a Japanese Ferrari, beating Honda's NSX to the trick by half a decade. Better still, just like the hardest of the hardcore roaring Italian monsters of its day it even had a rear mid-engine layout - i.e., the engine was mounted literally right behind the driver to achieve a perfect weight balance. The engine itself was quite small - only a 1.6 liter four-banger - but it revved like a mofo, could be supercharged for good measure, and - as one of the legendary Toyota A-engines - it lasted pretty much until Richard Pryor came along and shot it with a .357. And most importantly, the MR2 was cheap. All of this meant that any moderately successful 20-something could suddenly own himself a very reliable hardcore exotic sports car for about the same price as a four-door family cruiser. The MR2 was a stupendous achievement, and it was also voice-hearing, straightjacket-wearing, bug-eating nuts. I absolutely love it; it's my favorite Toyota ever, by miles.
(For the purposes of being thorough: GM also built a mid-engined car at about the same time, the Fiero. Unfortunately it had a habit of catching on fire)
Like Toyota's mad cars, Bell's has brewed some mad beers. I'll cite just one, which is (so far as I can tell) universally beloved: the Hopslam Ale. Unfortunately I can't speak from firsthand experience here; I tried to get my hands on one of these monsters to review, but by the time I realized it existed (uh, sometime this past summer) it had disappeared from the shelves altogether. The Hopslam, in essence, is a massive 10% ABV India Pale Ale. The very idea of such a thing is slightly insane, the fantasy of a dangerous and antisocial cascade addict, and it's certainly not the kind of brew you'd throw together in a weekend. Nevertheless, the folks at Bell's got together one day, seemingly lost their minds for awhile, and then went and made it. And that's wonderful.
So, here's the deal with my four beers. I'm expecting at least half of these to be boring, frankly. The math demands it. But what I'm really hoping for is that at least one will demonstrate the madness that I know Bell's is capable of, and earn my undying love.
So, let's get this going. First: the Bell's Special Double Cream Stout.
Well, what exactly is so "special" about it, I wonder? It comes in a fairly unimpressive, winter-themed bottle with some buck-naked tree branches (call me a philistine, but I miss the cow a little). In terms of style, this is apparently a milk stout - roughly comparable, then, to the Left Hand Milk Stout I reviewed (and loved) last month. I'm expecting good things, and the initial impressions don't let me down. This stuff pours a beautiful dark russet color, with a one-finger off-white head. The aroma, unsurprisingly, reminds me a lot of the Left Hand - it's basically good, lactose-rich chocolate milk. It's not quite as strong a nose as the LHMS, especially when agitated, but in return there's a little more going on. I detect hints of caramel and butterscotch buried a ways behind the chocolate milk. There's a little tinge of hops as well.
So I take my first sip, expecting the milky smoothness of the Left Hand, and... I don't get it. Astonishingly, this is actually thin. Very thin. It certainly doesn't have anything like the rich mouth-coating texture I was expecting, anyways. In terms of body this is essentially comparable to a porter, - and that's not necessarily bad if you're selling yourself as a porter, and not as a "Special Double Cream Stout." I've discovered, then, what the "special" means: they took the cream out.
It's not all that great as far as taste goes, either; I get lots and lots of roasted malts, with little else. It's just a muddy cacao bitterness that occasionally (but not often) lets rays of sweetness shine though. The aftertaste starts out with a dry, bitter twang, but if you let it linger for a bit you'll get (funny enough) a kind of earthy fruitiness as well. Think of musty, chalky raisins and you'll be close. It's not particularly pleasant, sadly. On a side note, this also tastes hotter than the Left Hand - a fact confirmed by the 6.1% alcohol content (as compared to 5.2).
I'm disappointed by this one in a big way; it's much drier than the Left Hand, which (again) would be fine if it were anything other than a "Special Double Cream Stout." I suppose the dryness and unrelenting cacao bitterness could suit some, but I find it to be nowhere near as much of a pleasure to sip. This, too, would be fine if the Bell's were cheaper than the LHMS (which, at $11 a sixer, is a bit dear) - but astonishingly, it actually costs more. And a lot more than Bell's regular beer. Bottom line, the Milk Stout is a supremely great sit-back-and-murder-two-hours beer. This, on the other hand, is more of a drink-while-chowing-on-gouda-and-a-barbeque-sandwich kind of beer. I don't mind such beers, of course, but I've got a ton of the latter to choose from and not a lot of the former. It's decent, where I was looking for great.
So, onto the Bell's Best Brown, then. It's a brown ale that comes with an owl on the bottle's label. Hmm, well, I'm honestly not expecting much from this one.
It's clearly not as thick as the stout as it pours (although it's not exactly a pilsner either). And it's not really "brown" per se - it's more like a darkish rusty color, with a foamy beige two finger head. The aroma's on the weak side for a brown; maltiness is the chief note, plus some grassiness, a touch of apple, and a slightly lemony hop tinge. It's rather pleasant, actually, like a nap in your backyard hammock.
And now I sip the stuff, and I'm honestly shocked. This beer, spookily, comes off as creamy - like, really creamy. It's like the lactose that was supposed to go into the Double Cream stout went into this instead. Whatever's responsible, I like it. In the front I get a little bit of fruity sourness, but that's quickly dispatched with a big wave of creamy, caramelly, malty goodness mixed in with a nuttiness that's spot-on for the style. Once it reaches the back the hops cut through and (politely, reservedly, like nervous children asking questions at Sunday school) have their say. The aftertaste is mainly the aforementioned nuttiness, with a touch of the hoppy citrus suspended over it.
It's very good, in that understated English brown sort of way. If you can think of brown ales on a spectrum ranging roughly from South Shore's Nut Brown (the most subdued) to Dogfish Head's Indian Brown (the most fierce), this is about 80% of the way towards the South Shore. There's enough hops around to remind you that you're, you know, drinking beer, but beyond that it holds back and just lets the texture and the earthy caramel speak for itself. Aside from the creaminess, then, this is a fairly standard (albeit particularly well-done) brown ale. And that's by no means a bad thing: an Indian Brown may be great for when you'd like to be wowed, but this, this stuff is comfort food. It's a big old Labrador coming to meet you at the door after a long day at work. It'd make a fantastic session beer, and frankly I like it a heck of a lot more than the Cream Stout (which is a neat trick, because it's two or four bucks cheaper for six).
All right then, the Bell's Expedition Stout. This is a Russian imperial, folks, so it should go right for the jugular. And, importantly, I'm drinking this one very fresh - it's had no aging at all, and I've been told this is a brew that probably needs it. So I'm expecting things to be pretty lively.
As expected, it pours a nice thick black, the usual dirty motor oil look. It also has a relatively large head - I get almost two fingers, and I didn't even pour the whole bottle. The aroma, again, is somewhat more subdued than I expected (the Brooklyn beats the pants off this for sheer knockdown power). When I sniff deep, oddly enough the first thing I notice is a kind of rustiness from the hops. It's not great. Things open up a bit with some agitation, giving off some toffee scents and (perhaps) a little bit of coffee. I can't even detect much heat - surprising for something that's a whopping 10.5% alcohol. Even when agitated, though, this thing has a very subtle nose. Weird. Well, bottom's up.
Wow, there we go. That knockdown power I was expecting in the nose? In the taste, it's there. This here is high-caliber shit; it's very strong and very rough. Some aging would probably mellow this right down, I think, but at the moment it's a teenaged street tough with a knife and a disregard for the health of others. Up front is a roasted bitterness with a sharp alcohol edge. Moving on back, I get cacao - lots and lots of very bitter cacao, with a touch of coffee in there as well. It's really mouth-coating, hair-raising stuff, too - this is a beer with a bad fuckin' attitude. Charcoaly hops hit like a FAE bomb at the end (destroying everything in your mouth that was left), and they carry right on through to the aftertaste (which, as is typical in imperials, lasts close to forever). Somewhere, Barber's Adagio for Strings is playing.
I don't know quite how to grade this. It's an imperial stout - which means I'll love it however bad it is - but this one is very, very tough to drink. It's to Storm King what Mezcal is to Tequila; imagine someone handing some newly-brewed Old Rasputin a chainsaw and you'll be close. I'm rather charmed by its rough ways, to be honest, but don't expect to drink it quickly. Set aside some time for this one, folks.
Last up is the Bell's Rye Stout. This is the one I've been saving a lot of hope for; I've never had a rye stout before, but given how much I love a good old fashioned (with Wild Turkey Rye or occasionally Old Overholt, if I'm feeling cheap) I've got high hopes that this'll be the great discovery of the night. The pale white gentleman on the bottle's label appears to have been killed by his, after all.
A fairly typical stout pour, really - it's a fairly thick, dark auburn, with hints of a cream head. The smell, mainly, is a big wet sloppy kiss of roasted barley. I get mostly milk chocolate all the way through, with a subtle edge to it in the back - I can't tell if it's from the alcohol (6.7%) or something else. Hmm.
The taste is - well. Hrm.
The rye is definitely adding something, that's for sure, but it's not quite what I was expecting. It's rather difficult to describe. As a rough blueprint, think of a standard medium-bodied Irish stout. Got that in your head? The creamy texture, the dry finish? Okay, if you can, mentally remove the dry, gentle hoppiness and replace it with a kind of mouth-coating bready feel. Yes, bready, as if you're chewing a slice of pumpernickel or maybe eating a nice aged cheese. I was expecting spice and burn with this stout, Sazerac-style, but it's not like that at all - instead the general sense is just this nice, yeasty, wheaty, slightly bitter flavor. It's odd.
All right, I should probably be more precise about the taste. Up front I get the creamy texture and a little bit of a tingle, but nothing out of the ordinary. There's still not much to talk about as it moves back, save a bit of bitterness (this stuff is smooth to a fault). By the end you get a bit of the roasted, milk chocolate flavor promised in the smell. It's only after you've swallowed that the yeasty, earthy, grainy bread taste shows up, and it lingers for awhile in tandem with the roasted sweetness. The alcohol isn't that strong (6.7%), but if you're paying attention you can tell it's there.
I don't know what to think of this one. It's not a bad beer at all, it's just not what I was expecting. I was looking for a rye whiskey assault, and got a sandwich. Verdict: decent, not great.
So that's it then. Four beers, and no real masterpiece among them. The SDC Stout was the biggest disappointment, as it just comes across like a mediocre porter. The Rye wasn't that amazing either. The Expedition Stout, while by far the most exciting beer here, was unweildy and not that much fun to drink. So the "winner," astonishingly, is the sleeper of the bunch - the Best Brown Ale. It is, as near as you could want, a perfect workhorse of a brown ale; sure, they could have gussied it up a little more if they'd wanted, but that would have lost the point of a simple brown ale. This beer is here to pamper you, to hand you your slippers and lie at your feet, and it does that flawlessly.
And thus, I wade into the Bell's portfolio and pick out the most boring beer of the four as my favorite. Against my better judgment, against my own convictions. I feel slightly guilty about this, as if I'd just driven a bunch of Toyotas and the one I preferred was the Avalon. Nevertheless, the result stands. And really, as much as I love the MR2, maybe the Avalon's not such a bad option after all.
Bell's Special Double Cream Stout
Grade: B-
Summary: It's a cream stout without the cream. Yeah. Pretty good.
Bell's Best Brown Ale
Grade: B+
Summary: It's a fine example of a mild brown ale. Yeah. Very good.
Bell's Expedition Stout
Grade: B
Summary: Charcoal ninjas declare war on your mouth.
Bell's Rye Stout
Grade: B
Summary: It's a really bready stout. Yeah. Pretty good.
So here's the deal. After much singles-buying and several people dropping off beer for Thanksgiving, I've now inexplicably got my hands on collection of four (4) different beers from Bell's Brewery. I didn't plan for this and I don't really know how this happened, (given that I don't typically buy Bell's), but here I am anyways. Funny enough, three of them are stouts as well (probably because Bell's has some crazy obsession with stouts - last I checked they sold about a dozen of the things during various parts of the year). All told, I've got me an Expedition Stout, a Special Double Cream Stout, a Rye Stout, and a Best Brown Ale. I'm hoping amazing things will happen, and dreading that they won't.
You see, I like to think of Bell's as something like the Toyota of the microbrewing world. I do this for several reasons. First: they're fairly ubiquitous. Toyota is the largest car company in the world, and while Bell's isn't quite up to that level, the upper midwest is still nevertheless utterly saturated with them. If any store around here sells any microbeer at all, they're going to sell Bell's. Second: they're reliable. I've never had a Bell's that's actually been bad, which is to their credit. Third: most of what they make is pretty boring. As examples of this I'll cite their Porter, Lager, and Pale Ale, all of which I've had sometime in the past year. All three of these beers are quite competent, practically flawless, and deeply unexciting examples of their styles. I wasn't exactly let down, I just felt like I was drinking... a porter, a lager, and a pale ale. With nothing much remotely interesting about them. If I ever have any of those beers again, I might review them - but it'd be hard. I think I'd come up with something along the lines of: "Yeah. Pretty good."
Those, then, are the three typical things. But there's one other thing about Toyota, and (indeed) about Bell's, that most people don't notice. And that's Point The Fourth: every once in awhile, when the mood is just right, they can and do go completely insane.
I could cite several moments from Toyota's occasional dives into madness. The original Scion xB, for example, or the 2000gt, or the upcoming Lexus LFA (which will cost three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars). But there's a much better example to be found. Way, way back in the glorious cocaine-and-Wham!-fuelled days of 1985, Toyota created something very special. Up until that year the company had mostly been making its name off of stuff like the Tercel and the Cressida - cars that never broke down, at the cost of being deeply dreary. And then it dropped this thing - the MR2. It was an instant masterpiece: a light, stripped-down, fingertippy, revvy, quite fast sporty coupe. Even better than that, it was (and still is) stunningly good-looking. In terms of its looks, the MR2 was like a Japanese Ferrari. No, not was like, but was a Japanese Ferrari, beating Honda's NSX to the trick by half a decade. Better still, just like the hardest of the hardcore roaring Italian monsters of its day it even had a rear mid-engine layout - i.e., the engine was mounted literally right behind the driver to achieve a perfect weight balance. The engine itself was quite small - only a 1.6 liter four-banger - but it revved like a mofo, could be supercharged for good measure, and - as one of the legendary Toyota A-engines - it lasted pretty much until Richard Pryor came along and shot it with a .357. And most importantly, the MR2 was cheap. All of this meant that any moderately successful 20-something could suddenly own himself a very reliable hardcore exotic sports car for about the same price as a four-door family cruiser. The MR2 was a stupendous achievement, and it was also voice-hearing, straightjacket-wearing, bug-eating nuts. I absolutely love it; it's my favorite Toyota ever, by miles.
(For the purposes of being thorough: GM also built a mid-engined car at about the same time, the Fiero. Unfortunately it had a habit of catching on fire)
Like Toyota's mad cars, Bell's has brewed some mad beers. I'll cite just one, which is (so far as I can tell) universally beloved: the Hopslam Ale. Unfortunately I can't speak from firsthand experience here; I tried to get my hands on one of these monsters to review, but by the time I realized it existed (uh, sometime this past summer) it had disappeared from the shelves altogether. The Hopslam, in essence, is a massive 10% ABV India Pale Ale. The very idea of such a thing is slightly insane, the fantasy of a dangerous and antisocial cascade addict, and it's certainly not the kind of brew you'd throw together in a weekend. Nevertheless, the folks at Bell's got together one day, seemingly lost their minds for awhile, and then went and made it. And that's wonderful.
So, here's the deal with my four beers. I'm expecting at least half of these to be boring, frankly. The math demands it. But what I'm really hoping for is that at least one will demonstrate the madness that I know Bell's is capable of, and earn my undying love.
So, let's get this going. First: the Bell's Special Double Cream Stout.
Well, what exactly is so "special" about it, I wonder? It comes in a fairly unimpressive, winter-themed bottle with some buck-naked tree branches (call me a philistine, but I miss the cow a little). In terms of style, this is apparently a milk stout - roughly comparable, then, to the Left Hand Milk Stout I reviewed (and loved) last month. I'm expecting good things, and the initial impressions don't let me down. This stuff pours a beautiful dark russet color, with a one-finger off-white head. The aroma, unsurprisingly, reminds me a lot of the Left Hand - it's basically good, lactose-rich chocolate milk. It's not quite as strong a nose as the LHMS, especially when agitated, but in return there's a little more going on. I detect hints of caramel and butterscotch buried a ways behind the chocolate milk. There's a little tinge of hops as well.
So I take my first sip, expecting the milky smoothness of the Left Hand, and... I don't get it. Astonishingly, this is actually thin. Very thin. It certainly doesn't have anything like the rich mouth-coating texture I was expecting, anyways. In terms of body this is essentially comparable to a porter, - and that's not necessarily bad if you're selling yourself as a porter, and not as a "Special Double Cream Stout." I've discovered, then, what the "special" means: they took the cream out.
It's not all that great as far as taste goes, either; I get lots and lots of roasted malts, with little else. It's just a muddy cacao bitterness that occasionally (but not often) lets rays of sweetness shine though. The aftertaste starts out with a dry, bitter twang, but if you let it linger for a bit you'll get (funny enough) a kind of earthy fruitiness as well. Think of musty, chalky raisins and you'll be close. It's not particularly pleasant, sadly. On a side note, this also tastes hotter than the Left Hand - a fact confirmed by the 6.1% alcohol content (as compared to 5.2).
I'm disappointed by this one in a big way; it's much drier than the Left Hand, which (again) would be fine if it were anything other than a "Special Double Cream Stout." I suppose the dryness and unrelenting cacao bitterness could suit some, but I find it to be nowhere near as much of a pleasure to sip. This, too, would be fine if the Bell's were cheaper than the LHMS (which, at $11 a sixer, is a bit dear) - but astonishingly, it actually costs more. And a lot more than Bell's regular beer. Bottom line, the Milk Stout is a supremely great sit-back-and-murder-two-hours beer. This, on the other hand, is more of a drink-while-chowing-on-gouda-and-a-barbeque-sandwich kind of beer. I don't mind such beers, of course, but I've got a ton of the latter to choose from and not a lot of the former. It's decent, where I was looking for great.
So, onto the Bell's Best Brown, then. It's a brown ale that comes with an owl on the bottle's label. Hmm, well, I'm honestly not expecting much from this one.
It's clearly not as thick as the stout as it pours (although it's not exactly a pilsner either). And it's not really "brown" per se - it's more like a darkish rusty color, with a foamy beige two finger head. The aroma's on the weak side for a brown; maltiness is the chief note, plus some grassiness, a touch of apple, and a slightly lemony hop tinge. It's rather pleasant, actually, like a nap in your backyard hammock.
And now I sip the stuff, and I'm honestly shocked. This beer, spookily, comes off as creamy - like, really creamy. It's like the lactose that was supposed to go into the Double Cream stout went into this instead. Whatever's responsible, I like it. In the front I get a little bit of fruity sourness, but that's quickly dispatched with a big wave of creamy, caramelly, malty goodness mixed in with a nuttiness that's spot-on for the style. Once it reaches the back the hops cut through and (politely, reservedly, like nervous children asking questions at Sunday school) have their say. The aftertaste is mainly the aforementioned nuttiness, with a touch of the hoppy citrus suspended over it.
It's very good, in that understated English brown sort of way. If you can think of brown ales on a spectrum ranging roughly from South Shore's Nut Brown (the most subdued) to Dogfish Head's Indian Brown (the most fierce), this is about 80% of the way towards the South Shore. There's enough hops around to remind you that you're, you know, drinking beer, but beyond that it holds back and just lets the texture and the earthy caramel speak for itself. Aside from the creaminess, then, this is a fairly standard (albeit particularly well-done) brown ale. And that's by no means a bad thing: an Indian Brown may be great for when you'd like to be wowed, but this, this stuff is comfort food. It's a big old Labrador coming to meet you at the door after a long day at work. It'd make a fantastic session beer, and frankly I like it a heck of a lot more than the Cream Stout (which is a neat trick, because it's two or four bucks cheaper for six).
All right then, the Bell's Expedition Stout. This is a Russian imperial, folks, so it should go right for the jugular. And, importantly, I'm drinking this one very fresh - it's had no aging at all, and I've been told this is a brew that probably needs it. So I'm expecting things to be pretty lively.
As expected, it pours a nice thick black, the usual dirty motor oil look. It also has a relatively large head - I get almost two fingers, and I didn't even pour the whole bottle. The aroma, again, is somewhat more subdued than I expected (the Brooklyn beats the pants off this for sheer knockdown power). When I sniff deep, oddly enough the first thing I notice is a kind of rustiness from the hops. It's not great. Things open up a bit with some agitation, giving off some toffee scents and (perhaps) a little bit of coffee. I can't even detect much heat - surprising for something that's a whopping 10.5% alcohol. Even when agitated, though, this thing has a very subtle nose. Weird. Well, bottom's up.
Wow, there we go. That knockdown power I was expecting in the nose? In the taste, it's there. This here is high-caliber shit; it's very strong and very rough. Some aging would probably mellow this right down, I think, but at the moment it's a teenaged street tough with a knife and a disregard for the health of others. Up front is a roasted bitterness with a sharp alcohol edge. Moving on back, I get cacao - lots and lots of very bitter cacao, with a touch of coffee in there as well. It's really mouth-coating, hair-raising stuff, too - this is a beer with a bad fuckin' attitude. Charcoaly hops hit like a FAE bomb at the end (destroying everything in your mouth that was left), and they carry right on through to the aftertaste (which, as is typical in imperials, lasts close to forever). Somewhere, Barber's Adagio for Strings is playing.
I don't know quite how to grade this. It's an imperial stout - which means I'll love it however bad it is - but this one is very, very tough to drink. It's to Storm King what Mezcal is to Tequila; imagine someone handing some newly-brewed Old Rasputin a chainsaw and you'll be close. I'm rather charmed by its rough ways, to be honest, but don't expect to drink it quickly. Set aside some time for this one, folks.
Last up is the Bell's Rye Stout. This is the one I've been saving a lot of hope for; I've never had a rye stout before, but given how much I love a good old fashioned (with Wild Turkey Rye or occasionally Old Overholt, if I'm feeling cheap) I've got high hopes that this'll be the great discovery of the night. The pale white gentleman on the bottle's label appears to have been killed by his, after all.
A fairly typical stout pour, really - it's a fairly thick, dark auburn, with hints of a cream head. The smell, mainly, is a big wet sloppy kiss of roasted barley. I get mostly milk chocolate all the way through, with a subtle edge to it in the back - I can't tell if it's from the alcohol (6.7%) or something else. Hmm.
The taste is - well. Hrm.
The rye is definitely adding something, that's for sure, but it's not quite what I was expecting. It's rather difficult to describe. As a rough blueprint, think of a standard medium-bodied Irish stout. Got that in your head? The creamy texture, the dry finish? Okay, if you can, mentally remove the dry, gentle hoppiness and replace it with a kind of mouth-coating bready feel. Yes, bready, as if you're chewing a slice of pumpernickel or maybe eating a nice aged cheese. I was expecting spice and burn with this stout, Sazerac-style, but it's not like that at all - instead the general sense is just this nice, yeasty, wheaty, slightly bitter flavor. It's odd.
All right, I should probably be more precise about the taste. Up front I get the creamy texture and a little bit of a tingle, but nothing out of the ordinary. There's still not much to talk about as it moves back, save a bit of bitterness (this stuff is smooth to a fault). By the end you get a bit of the roasted, milk chocolate flavor promised in the smell. It's only after you've swallowed that the yeasty, earthy, grainy bread taste shows up, and it lingers for awhile in tandem with the roasted sweetness. The alcohol isn't that strong (6.7%), but if you're paying attention you can tell it's there.
I don't know what to think of this one. It's not a bad beer at all, it's just not what I was expecting. I was looking for a rye whiskey assault, and got a sandwich. Verdict: decent, not great.
So that's it then. Four beers, and no real masterpiece among them. The SDC Stout was the biggest disappointment, as it just comes across like a mediocre porter. The Rye wasn't that amazing either. The Expedition Stout, while by far the most exciting beer here, was unweildy and not that much fun to drink. So the "winner," astonishingly, is the sleeper of the bunch - the Best Brown Ale. It is, as near as you could want, a perfect workhorse of a brown ale; sure, they could have gussied it up a little more if they'd wanted, but that would have lost the point of a simple brown ale. This beer is here to pamper you, to hand you your slippers and lie at your feet, and it does that flawlessly.
And thus, I wade into the Bell's portfolio and pick out the most boring beer of the four as my favorite. Against my better judgment, against my own convictions. I feel slightly guilty about this, as if I'd just driven a bunch of Toyotas and the one I preferred was the Avalon. Nevertheless, the result stands. And really, as much as I love the MR2, maybe the Avalon's not such a bad option after all.
Bell's Special Double Cream Stout
Grade: B-
Summary: It's a cream stout without the cream. Yeah. Pretty good.
Bell's Best Brown Ale
Grade: B+
Summary: It's a fine example of a mild brown ale. Yeah. Very good.
Bell's Expedition Stout
Grade: B
Summary: Charcoal ninjas declare war on your mouth.
Bell's Rye Stout
Grade: B
Summary: It's a really bready stout. Yeah. Pretty good.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Stout Month Review: Founders Breakfast Stout
Generally when one uses terms like "coffee" and "chocolate" in booze reviews, one says them in a kind of analogous way. I certainly don't mean that I think there's actually chocolate in the brew, nor even that it even tastes like it does - I simply go searching for some adequate word, some useful description to get at what scents and flavors I encounter in the beer, and happen upon the closest other scents and flavors that I can think of. Hence, "I smell a bit of coffee in this...", "I taste chocolate and some cherries...", and so on. Things begin to get complicated, of course, once brewers (being the crazy people that they are) begin putting actual coffee and chocolate into their beers.
Initially this seems like it would be a good idea. I'm no purist, after all, and I doubt many beer fans are. I say, the more ridiculous shit that brewers can do to their beer, the better - so long as it works. And chocolate and coffee seem like they would work pretty darn well. Again, how many reviews (like mine - guilty as charged) positively describe, e.g., the chocolatey taste of a beer? Imagine how much the love would increase if one actually put chocolate in!! And so it becomes the most logical thing in the world to dump real chocolate and real coffee into the vats. And the results so far have been... well, let's be kind and say "mixed."
I like chocolate a lot, and so I thought I'd be pleased by the various beers I've had that use actual chocolate to brew. But the truth of the matter is, chocolate mostly gets lost when it enters a beer. It sinks into the background and mostly disappears, leaving only a vague bittersweetness. I thought, when I first bought it, that the Young's Double Chocolate Stout would be brilliant, but it wasn't: instead it was simply a (rather thin and one-dimensional) stout, slightly more bittersweet than others. Nothing bad, of course, just uninspired. Coffee beers, in contrast, go way back in the other direction. Put coffee in anything, it seems, and the coffee simply takes it over - for the three or four of these porters and stouts that I've tried, I might as well have been drinking a big pot of iced-down joe. The only one I'd previously found to be reasonably successful is Kona's Pipeline Porter, and that's only because they obviously did everything in their power to keep the thing as light and as balanced as humanly possible (even so, I could never drink more than one a day).
And so we come to the Founders Breakfast Stout, which the bottle describes as a "Double Chocolate Coffee Oatmeal Stout." That sounds, in theory, like it should be great. Even the all-knowing internet says it's great: RateBeer claims it's the 39th best beer in existence, BeerAdvocate disagrees and says it's the 21st. The rather grotesque baby on the bottle's label seems to agree as well. Then you actually try it, and things start to go wrong.
It pours pitch black, with a moderate viscosity and a tiny bronze half-finger head. That sounds pretty good, right? But then you take a scent, and - oh boy. It's coffee. It's all coffee, all the way down. Go ahead, stick your nose as deep in there as you can tolerate, you're not going to find anything in there beyond coffee. It's the unmistakable smell of a kitchen that's had its joe maker set on Warm for three hours. And that's good if you like coffee, but I like my beers to have other elements.
Take a sip, and what you get is entirely dominated by - you guessed it - coffee. In the front there's a tingly jolt of java bitterness. It quickly coats your mouth in espresso as it travels back, and leaves a bitter coffee aftertaste behind (with maybe a tinge of sweetness for relief). This beer is coffee, coffee, coffee. There could be oatmeal or chocolate or scrambled eggs or even Cinnamon Toast Frikkin' Crunch brewed into this stuff, and I wouldn't taste it at all. If there are any other elements whatsoever to this beer, the one-dimensional coffee taste just beats them back well beyond the margins and keeps them there for the duration of the sipping. The label says this beer is 8.3% alcohol. Do I believe it? Well, sure, but I would have also believed four or sixteen. I honestly couldn't imagine it making much difference: the coffee completely trumps the booziness here, just as it trumps everything else. If you honestly think this is the 21st best beer in the world, well, you're certainly entitled to that opinion. Maybe I'm even missing something in this stout that a more skilled or mature taster would pick up on. In the meantime, however, I tend to think you're simply bonkers.
I'll give it a B, since there's nothing actually wrong with the stuff - it just doesn't have breadth, it doesn't do anything beyond its one trick. And I may complain about the coffee dominating everything, yes, but it's actually a pretty pleasant coffee taste as far as these things go. If you're the type of person who makes your own espresso and drinks it straight, you'll appreciate this stuff far more than I can. As for me, if I wanted a big heavy blast of joe I don't think I'd be drinking a beer for it.
[RETROSPECTIVE EDIT, Feb. '10: you know what? I had this again and found it even more unpleasant. This gets a B- at best.]
Grade: B
Summary: Coffee. Coffee coffee coffee. Coffee coffee, coffee coffee coffee. Coffee? Coffee.
Initially this seems like it would be a good idea. I'm no purist, after all, and I doubt many beer fans are. I say, the more ridiculous shit that brewers can do to their beer, the better - so long as it works. And chocolate and coffee seem like they would work pretty darn well. Again, how many reviews (like mine - guilty as charged) positively describe, e.g., the chocolatey taste of a beer? Imagine how much the love would increase if one actually put chocolate in!! And so it becomes the most logical thing in the world to dump real chocolate and real coffee into the vats. And the results so far have been... well, let's be kind and say "mixed."
I like chocolate a lot, and so I thought I'd be pleased by the various beers I've had that use actual chocolate to brew. But the truth of the matter is, chocolate mostly gets lost when it enters a beer. It sinks into the background and mostly disappears, leaving only a vague bittersweetness. I thought, when I first bought it, that the Young's Double Chocolate Stout would be brilliant, but it wasn't: instead it was simply a (rather thin and one-dimensional) stout, slightly more bittersweet than others. Nothing bad, of course, just uninspired. Coffee beers, in contrast, go way back in the other direction. Put coffee in anything, it seems, and the coffee simply takes it over - for the three or four of these porters and stouts that I've tried, I might as well have been drinking a big pot of iced-down joe. The only one I'd previously found to be reasonably successful is Kona's Pipeline Porter, and that's only because they obviously did everything in their power to keep the thing as light and as balanced as humanly possible (even so, I could never drink more than one a day).
And so we come to the Founders Breakfast Stout, which the bottle describes as a "Double Chocolate Coffee Oatmeal Stout." That sounds, in theory, like it should be great. Even the all-knowing internet says it's great: RateBeer claims it's the 39th best beer in existence, BeerAdvocate disagrees and says it's the 21st. The rather grotesque baby on the bottle's label seems to agree as well. Then you actually try it, and things start to go wrong.
It pours pitch black, with a moderate viscosity and a tiny bronze half-finger head. That sounds pretty good, right? But then you take a scent, and - oh boy. It's coffee. It's all coffee, all the way down. Go ahead, stick your nose as deep in there as you can tolerate, you're not going to find anything in there beyond coffee. It's the unmistakable smell of a kitchen that's had its joe maker set on Warm for three hours. And that's good if you like coffee, but I like my beers to have other elements.
Take a sip, and what you get is entirely dominated by - you guessed it - coffee. In the front there's a tingly jolt of java bitterness. It quickly coats your mouth in espresso as it travels back, and leaves a bitter coffee aftertaste behind (with maybe a tinge of sweetness for relief). This beer is coffee, coffee, coffee. There could be oatmeal or chocolate or scrambled eggs or even Cinnamon Toast Frikkin' Crunch brewed into this stuff, and I wouldn't taste it at all. If there are any other elements whatsoever to this beer, the one-dimensional coffee taste just beats them back well beyond the margins and keeps them there for the duration of the sipping. The label says this beer is 8.3% alcohol. Do I believe it? Well, sure, but I would have also believed four or sixteen. I honestly couldn't imagine it making much difference: the coffee completely trumps the booziness here, just as it trumps everything else. If you honestly think this is the 21st best beer in the world, well, you're certainly entitled to that opinion. Maybe I'm even missing something in this stout that a more skilled or mature taster would pick up on. In the meantime, however, I tend to think you're simply bonkers.
I'll give it a B, since there's nothing actually wrong with the stuff - it just doesn't have breadth, it doesn't do anything beyond its one trick. And I may complain about the coffee dominating everything, yes, but it's actually a pretty pleasant coffee taste as far as these things go. If you're the type of person who makes your own espresso and drinks it straight, you'll appreciate this stuff far more than I can. As for me, if I wanted a big heavy blast of joe I don't think I'd be drinking a beer for it.
[RETROSPECTIVE EDIT, Feb. '10: you know what? I had this again and found it even more unpleasant. This gets a B- at best.]
Grade: B
Summary: Coffee. Coffee coffee coffee. Coffee coffee, coffee coffee coffee. Coffee? Coffee.
Stout Month Review: Goose Island Bourbon County Stout (2008 vintage)
Recently I got into a discussion with some friends on a sticky point in anthropology and international rights that, it seems to me, can be broadened into a philosophical issue. It started with the famous Trekkian question of the prime directive. Let's say you encounter a small, entirely isolated culture on an island out in in the Pacific somewhere. How far, and under what conditions, do you interfere with or enculturate them?
The general agreement seemed to be that if the group needed some kind of medical assistance (they suffer from some kind of illness, say) then one should offer it or trade it to them; beyond that things got more iffy. It's quite questionable whether a "modern" culture, lifestyle, way of thinking etc. is any better (or, indeed, any worse) than that of the islanders. The itch to keep other cultures as they are, as unchanging objects - this is questionable. But then, the full-on enculturation of the islanders (e.g. taking them back to port) - this too is questionable. But what if they ask to be taken in? They could very well do so - and yet, could they make such a request based on any secure information?
During the course of the discussion it seemed to me that we were missing one possible avenue of approach, which I then tried to describe by analogy. I said something like the following:
"In my life, I'll probably never own a Lamborghini. But let us say that one day I gain an opportunity to have one, and all I need to do is to make the choice affirmatively. The difficulty is this: I have no idea what it would be like to drive a Lamborghini. It's very unlike anything I have previously dealt with. I shall never truly know what I'm in for in owning one until I sit in the seat and push the pedal - in other words, I shall never know what it's like to own a Lambo until I've already made the decision to own one. So it looks as if I have to choose somewhat blindly. Nevertheless, in the meantime there's still something I can do - I can ask people who already own Lamborghinis to describe the experience, as best they can, in my terms, and I can listen carefully to their descriptions of the joys and the costs (I can also read reviews, etc.). I shall still be missing something, no doubt, but this allows me much more of an informed decision.
"Now, the islanders are in a similar situation to me and my Lamborghini. They can choose to be enculturated or not. But the condition for adequately knowing what that would be like and evaluating it appropriately, is that they already be enculturated. All the same, though, can't they talk to us and ask us what it's like? Can't we describe to them, in more or less imperfect ways, what it means to live in a so-called 'modern' world? A full education is out of the question here, but I think one might be able to communicate some sense of this life."
My roommate Claudia pointed out to me - quite rightly - that I assume that communication would be possible in the first place, when it may not be the case. Indeed I do, and I have no easy answer (philosopically) to what it would mean to establish such communication (e.g., whether that would already be a kind of interference). So, Claudia wins this round. Nevertheless, the Lamborghini buying example and the situation of the islanders seems to me to hint at a special kind of philosophical phenomenon. In both cases the matter chosen or denied is a black hole of sorts - if I stay away then I shall never see (understand) it, and if I move in for a closer study then I shall be pulled in without hope of reversing the decision. I will either be stuck with it or forever kept in ignorance.
Every choice - I put this forward as a hypothesis - presupposes some knowledge of the directions that may be taken. Call this knowledge the epistemic condition for the choice. What is distinctive about these two cases is that although the epistemic condition is given in some sense - I will know what I have chosen when I have chosen it - it is also, to some degree or another, unavailable, away, absent. Let us dub these situations abconditional choices, for lack of a better term. These are not simply choices made without adequate knowledge, but choices where the only way to know for sure is to choose a certain way.
The cliche'd example of such an abconditional choice, of course, is the game show host presenting three numbered doors. Most of these choices seem to me much more quotidian, however, and much closer to home. When we buy a gift (or really, any consumer product), or go on a date with someone, we choose abconditionally; just so, when we drive the back roads rather than the interstate, or learn the guitar rather than the piano. Many of the decisions we make in life are one-way streets that we cannot escape if we enter, and cannot know what lies on the other end; we can perhaps only rely on the word of those who have already gone in.
Such is the situation I find myself in trying to review the Bourbon County Stout. How the fuck do I describe this thing? Nothing I've ever had comes close, not even the Payton Bourbon Barrel Stout, and I'm willing to bet the same goes for you, dear reader. I'll do the best that I can, but in the end the only way you'll know for sure what this sucker is is to try it for your own self.
Everything about this beer says it's going to be huge. The story helpfully written on the bottle (which is rather nicely designed, by the way, as is standard for Goose Island) indicates they made this by jamming malt into their tuns to the point of overflowing and then aging the results in an oak bourbon barrel for 100 days. How heavy is the result? Well, it's 13% alcohol. Thirteen percent. I've had distilled liquors weaker than that. So basically I'm expecting this thing to knock my damn fool head off (and, just to give you a preview, it doesn't disappoint).
I expect something special when I popped the top - a Michael Bay-style explosion, maybe. But there's nothing, just a very quiet hiss (there's not much carbonation in something like this, as you can imagine). I expect the smell to start pervading the room immediately, the way the Payton Stout did. But it doesn't - sure, it's got a striking odor when I take a whiff from the bottle, but it doesn't stink up the whole area. I give it a pour - it's absolutely pitch black and quite thick, albeit not as much as the Payton. Head? Ha, you must be joking. This is thirteen percent, vato, nothing's escaping from this shit. There's a little bit of copper foam haplessly floating around, but that's all: looking for a glorious stouty head is a lost cause here. The smell, again, is very similar to the Payton, but a lot more subdued - it's mainly sweet vanilla, with a few bourbon notes. It's hot, though. No hiding the alcohol when the brew's this big.
At this point I'm - well, not exactly disappointed, but certainly not bowled over. I paid six bucks for this bottle, versus (on average) two-fitty for the Payton - which spent three times as much time in the barrel. Honestly I'm feeling a little bit gypped. And then I take my first sip.
Holy fucking shit wow. Wow. What in the. I can't even. This is. I. Guh.
This beer is absolutely, completely overwhelming. Goose Island put a blurb on the side of the bottle, claiming it has "more flavor than your average case of beer." Astonishingly, they aren't lying. Do you remember the lack of dimensionality I complained about in the Payton review? That dimensionality is here, in spades. Drinking that was like sitting inside a giant subwoofer. Drinking this is like sitting inside a giant orchestra. Fucking hell, you know what? That's putting it way too elegantly. Drinking this is like being socked in the head by The Thing - it's just an unbelievably strong, potent, mouth-coating taste.
Okay, backing up a little, let's see if I can be more precise about this. Up front, there's slickness and a little bit of bitterness. Then, moving back, it e-x-p-l-o-d-e-s. The main taste is oak, bourbon, and roasted malts, but there's so much else here I don't even know where to begin. Licorice. Espresso. Rye. Prunes. Cacao? (Look, I got nothing folks, they should've sent a poet.) After it hits the back, the oaky notes begin to assert themselves more forcefully and take over, leaving an aftertaste so heavy it feels like you're breathing alcohol for seconds afterwards.
The mouthfeel is, of course, extremely thick and almost clammy. But in a good way. Like the Payton, this shit will coat your mouth like nothing else - don't even think of pairing it with anything, the BCS'll just run right over it and then take another pass to make sure it's dead. Oddly, though, I find this monster easier to drink than the Payton as well. I'd never call it a sessioner, but the sheer mass of flavors beg to be examined and inspected with another sip. Really, this isn't a beer, it's a fucking Bruckner symphony.
One final note for the description: this shit is STRONG. I know I said 13%, but it's definitely the harder side of 13%. I am now barely halfway down the bottle (a feat which took more than a half-hour), and I am well beyond Buzzed and entering the land of Shitfaced. Based on the sheer alcoholic force of this brew, thirteen sounds like a woeful underestimation. I don't mind, of course, but don't plan on doing much after you down one of these.
The grade? A+. Easily. I'm completely sold - there's simply nothing else to be done here. When I wasn't paying attention, Goose Island - they of the ubiquitous shitty wheat ale - went and crafted a masterpiece. Actually, this is something more than a masterpiece: it's a Concorde, it's a milestone in brewing history. I am left with nothing to compare it to.
My local Binny's has had four packs of the 2008 vintage on hand since last year, and they're selling them for about $21. That's well over five bucks for a bottle. Is it worth it? My opinion lies somewhere between "Yes" and "That's a Fucking Bargain," but I know that's probably not going to help you much - you who is reading this, you who is trying to decide whether to drink this stuff. I wish there was something I could say that would help, but I hit a wall a few paragraphs ago. In the end, you'll either try it or you won't, and you'll make that decision having no idea what you're getting into.
Grade: A+
Summary: It's a beer in the same way that Heracles was a man. It is, and yet... it just isn't.
The general agreement seemed to be that if the group needed some kind of medical assistance (they suffer from some kind of illness, say) then one should offer it or trade it to them; beyond that things got more iffy. It's quite questionable whether a "modern" culture, lifestyle, way of thinking etc. is any better (or, indeed, any worse) than that of the islanders. The itch to keep other cultures as they are, as unchanging objects - this is questionable. But then, the full-on enculturation of the islanders (e.g. taking them back to port) - this too is questionable. But what if they ask to be taken in? They could very well do so - and yet, could they make such a request based on any secure information?
During the course of the discussion it seemed to me that we were missing one possible avenue of approach, which I then tried to describe by analogy. I said something like the following:
"In my life, I'll probably never own a Lamborghini. But let us say that one day I gain an opportunity to have one, and all I need to do is to make the choice affirmatively. The difficulty is this: I have no idea what it would be like to drive a Lamborghini. It's very unlike anything I have previously dealt with. I shall never truly know what I'm in for in owning one until I sit in the seat and push the pedal - in other words, I shall never know what it's like to own a Lambo until I've already made the decision to own one. So it looks as if I have to choose somewhat blindly. Nevertheless, in the meantime there's still something I can do - I can ask people who already own Lamborghinis to describe the experience, as best they can, in my terms, and I can listen carefully to their descriptions of the joys and the costs (I can also read reviews, etc.). I shall still be missing something, no doubt, but this allows me much more of an informed decision.
"Now, the islanders are in a similar situation to me and my Lamborghini. They can choose to be enculturated or not. But the condition for adequately knowing what that would be like and evaluating it appropriately, is that they already be enculturated. All the same, though, can't they talk to us and ask us what it's like? Can't we describe to them, in more or less imperfect ways, what it means to live in a so-called 'modern' world? A full education is out of the question here, but I think one might be able to communicate some sense of this life."
My roommate Claudia pointed out to me - quite rightly - that I assume that communication would be possible in the first place, when it may not be the case. Indeed I do, and I have no easy answer (philosopically) to what it would mean to establish such communication (e.g., whether that would already be a kind of interference). So, Claudia wins this round. Nevertheless, the Lamborghini buying example and the situation of the islanders seems to me to hint at a special kind of philosophical phenomenon. In both cases the matter chosen or denied is a black hole of sorts - if I stay away then I shall never see (understand) it, and if I move in for a closer study then I shall be pulled in without hope of reversing the decision. I will either be stuck with it or forever kept in ignorance.
Every choice - I put this forward as a hypothesis - presupposes some knowledge of the directions that may be taken. Call this knowledge the epistemic condition for the choice. What is distinctive about these two cases is that although the epistemic condition is given in some sense - I will know what I have chosen when I have chosen it - it is also, to some degree or another, unavailable, away, absent. Let us dub these situations abconditional choices, for lack of a better term. These are not simply choices made without adequate knowledge, but choices where the only way to know for sure is to choose a certain way.
The cliche'd example of such an abconditional choice, of course, is the game show host presenting three numbered doors. Most of these choices seem to me much more quotidian, however, and much closer to home. When we buy a gift (or really, any consumer product), or go on a date with someone, we choose abconditionally; just so, when we drive the back roads rather than the interstate, or learn the guitar rather than the piano. Many of the decisions we make in life are one-way streets that we cannot escape if we enter, and cannot know what lies on the other end; we can perhaps only rely on the word of those who have already gone in.
Such is the situation I find myself in trying to review the Bourbon County Stout. How the fuck do I describe this thing? Nothing I've ever had comes close, not even the Payton Bourbon Barrel Stout, and I'm willing to bet the same goes for you, dear reader. I'll do the best that I can, but in the end the only way you'll know for sure what this sucker is is to try it for your own self.
Everything about this beer says it's going to be huge. The story helpfully written on the bottle (which is rather nicely designed, by the way, as is standard for Goose Island) indicates they made this by jamming malt into their tuns to the point of overflowing and then aging the results in an oak bourbon barrel for 100 days. How heavy is the result? Well, it's 13% alcohol. Thirteen percent. I've had distilled liquors weaker than that. So basically I'm expecting this thing to knock my damn fool head off (and, just to give you a preview, it doesn't disappoint).
I expect something special when I popped the top - a Michael Bay-style explosion, maybe. But there's nothing, just a very quiet hiss (there's not much carbonation in something like this, as you can imagine). I expect the smell to start pervading the room immediately, the way the Payton Stout did. But it doesn't - sure, it's got a striking odor when I take a whiff from the bottle, but it doesn't stink up the whole area. I give it a pour - it's absolutely pitch black and quite thick, albeit not as much as the Payton. Head? Ha, you must be joking. This is thirteen percent, vato, nothing's escaping from this shit. There's a little bit of copper foam haplessly floating around, but that's all: looking for a glorious stouty head is a lost cause here. The smell, again, is very similar to the Payton, but a lot more subdued - it's mainly sweet vanilla, with a few bourbon notes. It's hot, though. No hiding the alcohol when the brew's this big.
At this point I'm - well, not exactly disappointed, but certainly not bowled over. I paid six bucks for this bottle, versus (on average) two-fitty for the Payton - which spent three times as much time in the barrel. Honestly I'm feeling a little bit gypped. And then I take my first sip.
Holy fucking shit wow. Wow. What in the. I can't even. This is. I. Guh.
This beer is absolutely, completely overwhelming. Goose Island put a blurb on the side of the bottle, claiming it has "more flavor than your average case of beer." Astonishingly, they aren't lying. Do you remember the lack of dimensionality I complained about in the Payton review? That dimensionality is here, in spades. Drinking that was like sitting inside a giant subwoofer. Drinking this is like sitting inside a giant orchestra. Fucking hell, you know what? That's putting it way too elegantly. Drinking this is like being socked in the head by The Thing - it's just an unbelievably strong, potent, mouth-coating taste.
Okay, backing up a little, let's see if I can be more precise about this. Up front, there's slickness and a little bit of bitterness. Then, moving back, it e-x-p-l-o-d-e-s. The main taste is oak, bourbon, and roasted malts, but there's so much else here I don't even know where to begin. Licorice. Espresso. Rye. Prunes. Cacao? (Look, I got nothing folks, they should've sent a poet.) After it hits the back, the oaky notes begin to assert themselves more forcefully and take over, leaving an aftertaste so heavy it feels like you're breathing alcohol for seconds afterwards.
The mouthfeel is, of course, extremely thick and almost clammy. But in a good way. Like the Payton, this shit will coat your mouth like nothing else - don't even think of pairing it with anything, the BCS'll just run right over it and then take another pass to make sure it's dead. Oddly, though, I find this monster easier to drink than the Payton as well. I'd never call it a sessioner, but the sheer mass of flavors beg to be examined and inspected with another sip. Really, this isn't a beer, it's a fucking Bruckner symphony.
One final note for the description: this shit is STRONG. I know I said 13%, but it's definitely the harder side of 13%. I am now barely halfway down the bottle (a feat which took more than a half-hour), and I am well beyond Buzzed and entering the land of Shitfaced. Based on the sheer alcoholic force of this brew, thirteen sounds like a woeful underestimation. I don't mind, of course, but don't plan on doing much after you down one of these.
The grade? A+. Easily. I'm completely sold - there's simply nothing else to be done here. When I wasn't paying attention, Goose Island - they of the ubiquitous shitty wheat ale - went and crafted a masterpiece. Actually, this is something more than a masterpiece: it's a Concorde, it's a milestone in brewing history. I am left with nothing to compare it to.
My local Binny's has had four packs of the 2008 vintage on hand since last year, and they're selling them for about $21. That's well over five bucks for a bottle. Is it worth it? My opinion lies somewhere between "Yes" and "That's a Fucking Bargain," but I know that's probably not going to help you much - you who is reading this, you who is trying to decide whether to drink this stuff. I wish there was something I could say that would help, but I hit a wall a few paragraphs ago. In the end, you'll either try it or you won't, and you'll make that decision having no idea what you're getting into.
Grade: A+
Summary: It's a beer in the same way that Heracles was a man. It is, and yet... it just isn't.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Stout Month Review: Great Lakes Blackout Stout
I love pop songs.
Mind you, this is kind of a crazy thing for me to admit. In college I was a music student for a good three years, and pop music never crossed my mind. Even earlier on, as a kid, I never really knew the stuff; I'd heard the crap my sister and friends would listen to, of course, but it never made any connection with me. My musical interests in high school, for the most part, tended towards Steve Reich, Schoenberg, Autechre, and the like. Kid A struck me as unremarkable, if that gives you some idea.
It wasn't until much, much later - we're talking like a year after my undergraduate degree - that I began to understand the essence of the pop song. The turning point, predictably, was Prince, as Prince got the medicine of pop music understanding into me by way of a spoonful of sweet, sweet weirdness. I mean, take a listen to this thing. I honestly think this is one of the best songs ever written: the verses are great, the chorus is spectacular, and it's got a riff so good no ass in hearing range shall remain unshaken. And yet in this version, it's got that freaky freeform intro and a bridge that lasts forever going pretty much nowhere. In every way it conforms to pop music forms, and yet it's almost eight minutes long and pretty much indisputably bizarre. (This taught me a lesson about pop music that I still recognize today: good pop music is, by definition, somewhat strange pop music. The weirder and more incomprehensible (within the form's limits), the better. Go listen to Thriller if you don't believe me: at every moment the album radiates weirdness, and yet it never fails to hit the standard cues. This marriage of formula and contained insanity just is good pop music).
After Prince it was only a matter of time before I found Marvin Gaye, Sinatra, Madonna, Bobby Darin, the Beatles, and of course Jacko. At about this time, of course, Rickrolling had hit the net with full force, and so I also found out about Stock Aitken Waterman - a cynical pop song factory that, by the end, had perfected the art of hitting the lowest common denomenator.
Good lord, the SAW back catalogues. What a fucking mess of horrible shit and fantastically inspired genius. Never Gonna Give You Up is only the beginning, folks, these people had been plowing the world with impossibly catchy tunes for years before they even hit on the goofy redhead in the suit. Remember Dead or Alive? That was SAW. Remember Bananarama? Yup. Hell, even Judas Priest worked with these fuckers for awhile. SAW was the scourge of the '80s pop charts, especially in the U.K., and they were even famous enough to even attract parodies (Rickroll fans should watch for an Astley trio about 45 seconds in). Obviously I personally skipped the portions of my childhood where I would have cared about any of this, but this strikes me as the sort of stuff that kids would have bought like musical crack right up until the point where it became cool to scoff at it. Such is the order of things. And it is terrible, right? It's not subtle, it's not something you can use to impress potential girlfriends if they have any degree of "taste," it's not something you can play seriously at parties. And yet.
You know all those free jazz albums you claim to love so much? Those breakcore producers, those psychobilly bands, those math rockers? When's the last time you ended up humming one of their tracks for days?
And that seems to me to be the fact of the matter. We can judge this stuff poorly all we like, but for some reason it sticks to us. It holds our interest, our care, when the things that should don't. And so you can pose and preen like you're above this stuff, you can hide behind your Mountain Goats and Death Cab albums all you want, but the fact of the matter is: these cynical fucks could write better music than half the folks in your collection.
The reason I bring up SAW, then, is because the Blackout Stout reminds me of them - and, I believe, for good reason.
Great Lakes is probably my favorite American brewery at the moment. I've already reviewed their Glockenspiel, but there's just so much more: the Dortmunder Gold and Eliot Ness, which are among the best lagers I've ever had; the Oktoberfest, which is a near-flawless exemplar of the style; and, above all, the Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, which I think is the best porter brewed in the States (excepting the Baltics, which are very different beers, and the much stronger "imperials" - e.g., Flying Dog's Gonzo porter). I've never had anything from them that was short of excellent; I'm not even sure if they're capable of it.
Today, though, I'm reviewing the Blackout Stout. They only brew these suckers in Winter, and I've been storing this one since March. The bottle, incidentally, declares a freshness date of August 9, 2009. I think that may be Great Lakes' poor idea of a joke.
Anyways, this stout has a rather unusual history. According to its website, it's named for "the infamous 'Blackout of 2003' that left the northeastern United States in complete darkness, but resulted in old-fashioned neighborhood porch parties and down-home fun." The picture on the bottle depicts this happy darkness, with candle-bearing folks getting together (apparently) to suck down a box full of fine Great Lakes beers. The trouble is, although this beer is named after this blackout, it clearly wasn't brewed for it: it got its first award in 1996, as "Emmett's Imperial Stout." I don't know who the hell Emmett is, but clearly the guy knew a thing or two about beers. Anyways, let's get this thing in a glass.
Well now, this isn't what I expected. It pours a ruby-tinged black - nothing out of the ordinary - but what surprises me is that it's really not all that thick. I mean, it's not exactly watery (this is an imperial stout, after all), but compared to others of the style this is definitely lacking in viscosity (think 5w20 rather than 20w50). I also get a one-finger tan head, with a little bit of lacing - that, like the color, is also pretty standard. It initially smells of cacao and a little bit of raisin; when agitated, I get some molasses as well. There's no trace of booziness at all, either. All in all, it's a very subtle smell after the heavy ice-creamy Brooklyn last week.
I've now taken my first sip, and the overall impression is ash - deliciously so. This tastes like a smoky fourth of July barbeque smells. Up front is a tingly, almost sandpapery texture, which - moving back - evolves into a wonderful roasted malt bittersweetness. There's a little bit of other stuff in there too - maybe some brown sugar - but not much. The charcoal taste hits at the end and takes up most of the aftertaste, along with some lingering brown sugar flavors. How can I describe this better? Do you remember how, way back when you roasted marshmallows as a kid, you used to prefer - rather than just searing them - actually catching the marshmallows on fire, and then blowing them out ? There was a good reason for this: burned almost to a crisp, they were actually way fucking better to eat. This stout is a lot like those crispy, burned, but delicious marshmallows. God it's good.
What's really striking is just how easy it is to drink. The mouthfeel is extremely light for this style - it's got none of the heavy bombast you get, e.g., in Old Rasputin. Despite the 9% abv, It would be dangerously easy to quaff this stuff all night. I said some nice things about the drinkability of the Brooklyn last week, but this is really in a different league altogether. I could work through a four-pack of these like a bag of candy - something I couldn't do with most stouts, let alone imperials. I of all people wouldn't want to draw sharp distinctions between styles, but the more I drink the more I think this may be mislabeled as a "stout." If anything this reminds me of their own Edmund Fitzgerald, a porter, with the roasted malts and the ashy hops all given a good extra jolt.
So, obviously the Blackout is not the most complex of the imperials. Nor the cheapest, I should add. However, it's incredibly delicious and almost pathologically drinkable. What this is, then, is the SAW take on the style. If you're trying to show off your manliness as a beer drinker, you can not and should not admit to liking it - it's just too damn smooth and simple. No, you'll want to find an imperial stout at 30 proof with enough hops to kill a hippo to declare as your favorite. Really though, if there's any of these things that one could drink every night, it's this - because it's just so goddamned fun. Appearances be damned, I couldn't stop loving it if I tried.
Grade: A-
Summary: The most drinkable imperial stout I've had yet.
Mind you, this is kind of a crazy thing for me to admit. In college I was a music student for a good three years, and pop music never crossed my mind. Even earlier on, as a kid, I never really knew the stuff; I'd heard the crap my sister and friends would listen to, of course, but it never made any connection with me. My musical interests in high school, for the most part, tended towards Steve Reich, Schoenberg, Autechre, and the like. Kid A struck me as unremarkable, if that gives you some idea.
It wasn't until much, much later - we're talking like a year after my undergraduate degree - that I began to understand the essence of the pop song. The turning point, predictably, was Prince, as Prince got the medicine of pop music understanding into me by way of a spoonful of sweet, sweet weirdness. I mean, take a listen to this thing. I honestly think this is one of the best songs ever written: the verses are great, the chorus is spectacular, and it's got a riff so good no ass in hearing range shall remain unshaken. And yet in this version, it's got that freaky freeform intro and a bridge that lasts forever going pretty much nowhere. In every way it conforms to pop music forms, and yet it's almost eight minutes long and pretty much indisputably bizarre. (This taught me a lesson about pop music that I still recognize today: good pop music is, by definition, somewhat strange pop music. The weirder and more incomprehensible (within the form's limits), the better. Go listen to Thriller if you don't believe me: at every moment the album radiates weirdness, and yet it never fails to hit the standard cues. This marriage of formula and contained insanity just is good pop music).
After Prince it was only a matter of time before I found Marvin Gaye, Sinatra, Madonna, Bobby Darin, the Beatles, and of course Jacko. At about this time, of course, Rickrolling had hit the net with full force, and so I also found out about Stock Aitken Waterman - a cynical pop song factory that, by the end, had perfected the art of hitting the lowest common denomenator.
Good lord, the SAW back catalogues. What a fucking mess of horrible shit and fantastically inspired genius. Never Gonna Give You Up is only the beginning, folks, these people had been plowing the world with impossibly catchy tunes for years before they even hit on the goofy redhead in the suit. Remember Dead or Alive? That was SAW. Remember Bananarama? Yup. Hell, even Judas Priest worked with these fuckers for awhile. SAW was the scourge of the '80s pop charts, especially in the U.K., and they were even famous enough to even attract parodies (Rickroll fans should watch for an Astley trio about 45 seconds in). Obviously I personally skipped the portions of my childhood where I would have cared about any of this, but this strikes me as the sort of stuff that kids would have bought like musical crack right up until the point where it became cool to scoff at it. Such is the order of things. And it is terrible, right? It's not subtle, it's not something you can use to impress potential girlfriends if they have any degree of "taste," it's not something you can play seriously at parties. And yet.
You know all those free jazz albums you claim to love so much? Those breakcore producers, those psychobilly bands, those math rockers? When's the last time you ended up humming one of their tracks for days?
And that seems to me to be the fact of the matter. We can judge this stuff poorly all we like, but for some reason it sticks to us. It holds our interest, our care, when the things that should don't. And so you can pose and preen like you're above this stuff, you can hide behind your Mountain Goats and Death Cab albums all you want, but the fact of the matter is: these cynical fucks could write better music than half the folks in your collection.
The reason I bring up SAW, then, is because the Blackout Stout reminds me of them - and, I believe, for good reason.
Great Lakes is probably my favorite American brewery at the moment. I've already reviewed their Glockenspiel, but there's just so much more: the Dortmunder Gold and Eliot Ness, which are among the best lagers I've ever had; the Oktoberfest, which is a near-flawless exemplar of the style; and, above all, the Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, which I think is the best porter brewed in the States (excepting the Baltics, which are very different beers, and the much stronger "imperials" - e.g., Flying Dog's Gonzo porter). I've never had anything from them that was short of excellent; I'm not even sure if they're capable of it.
Today, though, I'm reviewing the Blackout Stout. They only brew these suckers in Winter, and I've been storing this one since March. The bottle, incidentally, declares a freshness date of August 9, 2009. I think that may be Great Lakes' poor idea of a joke.
Anyways, this stout has a rather unusual history. According to its website, it's named for "the infamous 'Blackout of 2003' that left the northeastern United States in complete darkness, but resulted in old-fashioned neighborhood porch parties and down-home fun." The picture on the bottle depicts this happy darkness, with candle-bearing folks getting together (apparently) to suck down a box full of fine Great Lakes beers. The trouble is, although this beer is named after this blackout, it clearly wasn't brewed for it: it got its first award in 1996, as "Emmett's Imperial Stout." I don't know who the hell Emmett is, but clearly the guy knew a thing or two about beers. Anyways, let's get this thing in a glass.
Well now, this isn't what I expected. It pours a ruby-tinged black - nothing out of the ordinary - but what surprises me is that it's really not all that thick. I mean, it's not exactly watery (this is an imperial stout, after all), but compared to others of the style this is definitely lacking in viscosity (think 5w20 rather than 20w50). I also get a one-finger tan head, with a little bit of lacing - that, like the color, is also pretty standard. It initially smells of cacao and a little bit of raisin; when agitated, I get some molasses as well. There's no trace of booziness at all, either. All in all, it's a very subtle smell after the heavy ice-creamy Brooklyn last week.
I've now taken my first sip, and the overall impression is ash - deliciously so. This tastes like a smoky fourth of July barbeque smells. Up front is a tingly, almost sandpapery texture, which - moving back - evolves into a wonderful roasted malt bittersweetness. There's a little bit of other stuff in there too - maybe some brown sugar - but not much. The charcoal taste hits at the end and takes up most of the aftertaste, along with some lingering brown sugar flavors. How can I describe this better? Do you remember how, way back when you roasted marshmallows as a kid, you used to prefer - rather than just searing them - actually catching the marshmallows on fire, and then blowing them out ? There was a good reason for this: burned almost to a crisp, they were actually way fucking better to eat. This stout is a lot like those crispy, burned, but delicious marshmallows. God it's good.
What's really striking is just how easy it is to drink. The mouthfeel is extremely light for this style - it's got none of the heavy bombast you get, e.g., in Old Rasputin. Despite the 9% abv, It would be dangerously easy to quaff this stuff all night. I said some nice things about the drinkability of the Brooklyn last week, but this is really in a different league altogether. I could work through a four-pack of these like a bag of candy - something I couldn't do with most stouts, let alone imperials. I of all people wouldn't want to draw sharp distinctions between styles, but the more I drink the more I think this may be mislabeled as a "stout." If anything this reminds me of their own Edmund Fitzgerald, a porter, with the roasted malts and the ashy hops all given a good extra jolt.
So, obviously the Blackout is not the most complex of the imperials. Nor the cheapest, I should add. However, it's incredibly delicious and almost pathologically drinkable. What this is, then, is the SAW take on the style. If you're trying to show off your manliness as a beer drinker, you can not and should not admit to liking it - it's just too damn smooth and simple. No, you'll want to find an imperial stout at 30 proof with enough hops to kill a hippo to declare as your favorite. Really though, if there's any of these things that one could drink every night, it's this - because it's just so goddamned fun. Appearances be damned, I couldn't stop loving it if I tried.
Grade: A-
Summary: The most drinkable imperial stout I've had yet.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Stout Month Review: Stockyard Oatmeal Stout
I love pseudonyms, particularly due to the problems they present. Someone pens a text, and then adds a signature to it which is not their proper name: are they the author of this text?
I want to say: yes and no. Surely the text would not exist, were it not for the skill and the organization of the one behind the pen. But the concept of "author" is usually stronger than that: we want the text of an author to say what the author intends themselves to say. This need not be the case at all with a pseudonym. Kierkegaard, of course, is the textbook example. It is usually quite wrong to say, as we casually do, that "Kierkegaard suggested that...", "Kierkegaard held that...", etc.: precisely speaking we should say that he was the author of very little, but that he penned quite a lot. What he penned appeared under the names de Silentio, Climacus, Anti-Climacus, and so on, and we should not assume without further ado that these books say what Søren Kierkegaard intended.
But then again, one does not need a full-blown pseudonym to pen what one does not intend. Think, for example, of A Modest Proposal, which appeared under Jonathan Swift's own name. And think too of the contrary case of a pseudonym that allows an author to write exactly what they intend, but something which for one reason or another cannot appear under their own name (George Eliot, Lewis Carroll). There is, in any case, a sort of disconnect between authorship, the name which a text appears under, and the one penning the manuscript. This is by no means to say, as some of the more hasty among us might want, that there is no such thing as an author. This is nonsense: there are and have been plenty of examples of authorship in the simple and quite boring sense. A more serious question might be whether "authorship" should maintain its status as a kind of standard for any act of writing.
Here we have the Stockyard Oatmeal Stout, which is a pseudonymous beer. It claims to have been made by the "Stockyard Brewing Co." in Chicago. This company does not exist: there is no website, no address, no nothing. Instead, Stockyard is brewed under contract especially for Trader Joe's (where I bought it), and - if the internet is to be believed - it is in fact the work of our friends at Goose Island.
Now, this should seem a bit strange. First of all, Goose Island also sells an Oatmeal Stout under its own label; I've had it, and I like it. Second, that stout costs more money ($8 for a sixer), and you can buy it in many more places. So what's going on here? Has Goose Island simply repackaged their stout in a nice new red bottle to make some extra bucks? There's one way to find out.
First of all, the bottle. It's not the classy affair that the Goatmoose Stout's was. It's red and slightly garish; front and center is an old guy in a cap smirking at you, apparently just as happy as you are that you've saved two bucks. I'm not sure who the hell he's supposed to be, but he's certainly old and looks kind of vaguely blue-collary. There's also some cows and trains and other people in caps and... look, I don't know. I honestly don't think the Macbook guys put much work into this one, folks. Anyways, despite the rather stupid bottle, let's open this thing up and see if it actually is our old friend the Goatmoose.
Well, it pours dark brown with (yes) a half-finger off-white head - just like the Goatmoose stout. The smell is mainly of oats and just a little bit of fruitiness - just like the Goatmoose stout. The taste -
Actually, the taste is pretty different. It's more smooth and creamy than the Goatmoose for a start, and much more dry as well. Up front, I get a little tingle and some baker's chocolate. There's not much to say about the middle or the back end, to be honest - it's all a fairly successful mix of dry stout creamy and oatmeal stout smooth, with just a hint of bitterness after a moment. The aftertaste is a dry tang - some roasted hickory melded with mildly sour hops, and just a touch of malty sweetness. Not bad, and not at all the same beer as its brother. It does taste "cheap" in a way that's difficult to describe, though. Parts of the middle and the end almost remind me of a lager, it's actually quite thin (despite the creaminess), and the alcohol (although this is only a 5%er) comes out more strikingly than I would have thought.
I started this one expecting to get a fairly straightforward oatmeal stout like the Goatmoose, and what I got instead was an odd medium between the Goatmoose and an Irish stout. It's nowhere near as sweet as the Goatmoose - nor is it as refined - but it trades it out for more bitterness, a little more creaminess, and an extra touch of hops.
So which one is best? Well, if the two were priced the same, I'd say to buy the Goatmoose for drinking just one beer and to buy the Stockyard to make a night of it. Despite the odd lager character, the Stockyard is less sweet and lacks that sliminess I detected in the Goatmoose - and that makes it easier to drink in the long haul. But then, the Goatmoose is quite a lot more refined and interesting. You might actually be able to impress someone with the Goose Island stuff, while the Stockyard is fairly forgettable. The thing is, though, these aren't priced the same. At Trader Joe's, a six pack of Stockyards is six dollars. That's even less than the Black Hawk Stout I reviewed a few weeks ago. It tastes cheap, then, because it is cheap. That price, combined with its easy drinkability, makes it a hell of a good candidate for a party beer (even if, overall, I think I slightly prefer the Mendocino).
So I'm torn. I think the Goatmoose stout is the better beer in the end, but in a lot of ways this is the one I'd prefer to drink. It's not all that great, there's not all that much nuance to it, it's even kind of watery and grungy, but I think I like that unpretentious character. As far as pseudonyms go, Stockyard - with its worker's looks - couldn't be a better disguise for the rather too petit bourgeois Goose Island. This is a working man's beer, a stout for that anonymous blue collar joe on the label. It's the goddamned backbone of America, this stout is. So park that F-150, loosen the belt on those jeans, crank the Springsteen, and pop the cap on a manly American bottle of Stockyard. And hope to God no one finds out you were shopping at Trader Joe's.
Grade: C+
Summary: If Tom Hanks were a stout.
I want to say: yes and no. Surely the text would not exist, were it not for the skill and the organization of the one behind the pen. But the concept of "author" is usually stronger than that: we want the text of an author to say what the author intends themselves to say. This need not be the case at all with a pseudonym. Kierkegaard, of course, is the textbook example. It is usually quite wrong to say, as we casually do, that "Kierkegaard suggested that...", "Kierkegaard held that...", etc.: precisely speaking we should say that he was the author of very little, but that he penned quite a lot. What he penned appeared under the names de Silentio, Climacus, Anti-Climacus, and so on, and we should not assume without further ado that these books say what Søren Kierkegaard intended.
But then again, one does not need a full-blown pseudonym to pen what one does not intend. Think, for example, of A Modest Proposal, which appeared under Jonathan Swift's own name. And think too of the contrary case of a pseudonym that allows an author to write exactly what they intend, but something which for one reason or another cannot appear under their own name (George Eliot, Lewis Carroll). There is, in any case, a sort of disconnect between authorship, the name which a text appears under, and the one penning the manuscript. This is by no means to say, as some of the more hasty among us might want, that there is no such thing as an author. This is nonsense: there are and have been plenty of examples of authorship in the simple and quite boring sense. A more serious question might be whether "authorship" should maintain its status as a kind of standard for any act of writing.
Here we have the Stockyard Oatmeal Stout, which is a pseudonymous beer. It claims to have been made by the "Stockyard Brewing Co." in Chicago. This company does not exist: there is no website, no address, no nothing. Instead, Stockyard is brewed under contract especially for Trader Joe's (where I bought it), and - if the internet is to be believed - it is in fact the work of our friends at Goose Island.
Now, this should seem a bit strange. First of all, Goose Island also sells an Oatmeal Stout under its own label; I've had it, and I like it. Second, that stout costs more money ($8 for a sixer), and you can buy it in many more places. So what's going on here? Has Goose Island simply repackaged their stout in a nice new red bottle to make some extra bucks? There's one way to find out.
First of all, the bottle. It's not the classy affair that the Goatmoose Stout's was. It's red and slightly garish; front and center is an old guy in a cap smirking at you, apparently just as happy as you are that you've saved two bucks. I'm not sure who the hell he's supposed to be, but he's certainly old and looks kind of vaguely blue-collary. There's also some cows and trains and other people in caps and... look, I don't know. I honestly don't think the Macbook guys put much work into this one, folks. Anyways, despite the rather stupid bottle, let's open this thing up and see if it actually is our old friend the Goatmoose.
Well, it pours dark brown with (yes) a half-finger off-white head - just like the Goatmoose stout. The smell is mainly of oats and just a little bit of fruitiness - just like the Goatmoose stout. The taste -
Actually, the taste is pretty different. It's more smooth and creamy than the Goatmoose for a start, and much more dry as well. Up front, I get a little tingle and some baker's chocolate. There's not much to say about the middle or the back end, to be honest - it's all a fairly successful mix of dry stout creamy and oatmeal stout smooth, with just a hint of bitterness after a moment. The aftertaste is a dry tang - some roasted hickory melded with mildly sour hops, and just a touch of malty sweetness. Not bad, and not at all the same beer as its brother. It does taste "cheap" in a way that's difficult to describe, though. Parts of the middle and the end almost remind me of a lager, it's actually quite thin (despite the creaminess), and the alcohol (although this is only a 5%er) comes out more strikingly than I would have thought.
I started this one expecting to get a fairly straightforward oatmeal stout like the Goatmoose, and what I got instead was an odd medium between the Goatmoose and an Irish stout. It's nowhere near as sweet as the Goatmoose - nor is it as refined - but it trades it out for more bitterness, a little more creaminess, and an extra touch of hops.
So which one is best? Well, if the two were priced the same, I'd say to buy the Goatmoose for drinking just one beer and to buy the Stockyard to make a night of it. Despite the odd lager character, the Stockyard is less sweet and lacks that sliminess I detected in the Goatmoose - and that makes it easier to drink in the long haul. But then, the Goatmoose is quite a lot more refined and interesting. You might actually be able to impress someone with the Goose Island stuff, while the Stockyard is fairly forgettable. The thing is, though, these aren't priced the same. At Trader Joe's, a six pack of Stockyards is six dollars. That's even less than the Black Hawk Stout I reviewed a few weeks ago. It tastes cheap, then, because it is cheap. That price, combined with its easy drinkability, makes it a hell of a good candidate for a party beer (even if, overall, I think I slightly prefer the Mendocino).
So I'm torn. I think the Goatmoose stout is the better beer in the end, but in a lot of ways this is the one I'd prefer to drink. It's not all that great, there's not all that much nuance to it, it's even kind of watery and grungy, but I think I like that unpretentious character. As far as pseudonyms go, Stockyard - with its worker's looks - couldn't be a better disguise for the rather too petit bourgeois Goose Island. This is a working man's beer, a stout for that anonymous blue collar joe on the label. It's the goddamned backbone of America, this stout is. So park that F-150, loosen the belt on those jeans, crank the Springsteen, and pop the cap on a manly American bottle of Stockyard. And hope to God no one finds out you were shopping at Trader Joe's.
Grade: C+
Summary: If Tom Hanks were a stout.
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